Why You Keep Ending Up In The Same Hole

I first read this poem in my late twenties and I had to put it down and stare at the wall for a while. Because I knew that hole. I had fallen into it more times than I could count — different people, different circumstances, same feeling at the bottom.

Portia Nelson wrote it in 1977 and somehow she wrote it about all of us.

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost… I am helpless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place.

But, it isn’t my fault.

It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in. It’s a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

— Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk, 1977

The moment that changed everything for me wasn’t when I stopped falling. It was when I finally saw the hole for what it was — not bad luck, not other people’s fault, but a pattern. My pattern. And patterns, once you can see them, can be shifted.

That’s what Soulve is for. Not to fix you — because you’re not broken.

Just to help you finally see the hole. 

— Kim

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