For Those Still Becoming

August is the month that can't decide what it is.

Not summer anymore, not really. The light has started its slow retreat and the mornings carry that first hint of cool. But not fall yet either. The rain hasn't come back, the trees are still holding their green, and the year is sitting in the space between one thing and the next. An in-between month. A not-yet.

I've always felt at home in that space. Maybe because it's where I've spent most of my life.

There's a phrase I keep coming back to, in the writing and in my own head. Still becoming. I've used it more than once, because it keeps being true. For the people I make things for, and for me. It's the phrase I reach for when someone hasn't arrived yet at whatever they're moving toward, when they're mid-journey, mid-transition, mid-figuring-it-out. When they're not the person they were and not yet the person they'll be.

We don't talk about that middle much. We like the before and after. The story where someone knew, and then they became, and now they're settled and sure. Clean edges. A beginning and an arrival, with the long uncertain middle edited out.

But almost nobody actually lives there. Most of us are in the middle. Still working it out. Still trying on who we might be, quietly, where it's safe to. Still becoming.

And I want to say clearly, because I think it needs saying: the middle is not a waiting room. It's not the part you endure until the real thing starts. It is the real thing. The becoming is the life. You are not less yourself for being unfinished. You are not behind. There's no schedule you're failing to keep.

I think about the young people especially, the ones stepping into a new school year this month, into rooms where they're still deciding how much of themselves is safe to show. That in-between is heavy to carry. The not-yet-sure, the still-figuring, the wondering whether the room is ready for all of you. If that's you, I want you to know that the wondering itself is not a weakness. It's the shape of someone paying honest attention to their own life.

This has always been who we make things for. Not the arrived. The becoming. The soft, steady pieces meant for people who are still on the way, that don't ask you to have it all figured out before you're allowed to belong. You get to belong now. In the middle. Unfinished. Exactly as far along as you are.

August doesn't know what it is yet either. It's still becoming fall, one cool morning at a time, in no hurry at all.

So are you. And that's not something to fix.

Stay soft. Stay grounded.

— Patrick