Why "Now I Become Myself" and the Mobius Strip

The day I turned 50 years old the title of a poem came into my head. I had read it some time ago in my Life Journey class at school. It was referenced by Parker Palmer, along with the Mobius strip analogy (more on that later).  The title, "Now I Become Myself". The author, May Sarton. It was written in 1950.

Now I Become Myself - written by May Sarton in 1950

 Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

"Hurry, you will be dead before—"

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

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This poem resonated with me, as did the Mobius Strip. It is an excellent analogy for the way that I would like to view my life.

The Mobius Strip

The message becomes clear:
“Whatever is inside us continually flows outward to help form, or deform, the world–and whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform, our lives.  The Mobius strip is like life itself:  here, ultimately, there is only one reality.”

There is no place to hide. “We are constantly engaged in a seamless exchange between whatever is “out there” and whatever is “in here,” participating in the creation of reality, for better or for worse.”
Understanding this has helped me to purge a lot more “out there” so that I can enrich and simplify what is going on “in here.”

As  T.S. Eliot suggested:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

From Your Soul’s Journey to Wholeness by Parker J. Palmer, Spirituality & Health , September/October 2004
A Möbius strip made with a piece of paper and tape. If an ant were to crawl along the length of this strip, it would return to its starting point having traversed every part of the strip without ever crossing an edge. "to be or to do" (Elder Lynn G. Robbins)? The inner and outer need to connect much like a mobius strip in order to avoid hypocrisy. I love this analogy.

The inner life and the outer life, that are so interconnected, display who we really are and what we both give and take from the world(s) in which we live. Oh how I wish there was not hypocrisy, no disconnect between the two. I am learning to "become myself" and to be my true self as I make this journey of my life on the mobius strip.