Standing in our own shadows

Our shadows are elongated on the ground; the things that we ourselves are holding are making shadows that cast us in darkness. I could write that book, but… I could finish my PhD, but…. Shadows all, cast by ourselves.
I wonder if I am casting my own shadows all the time and don’t realize it. Am I constantly shifting to the left to get out of a shadow that I, in fact, have cast? Am I holding up something that blocks my own sun?
“Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?” wrote Lord Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton. We are fighting our own shadows. Need it be forever?
“Thus shadow owes its birth to light,” wrote John Gay in The Persian, Sun, and Cloud. Enjoy the light and embrace your shadow. If you turn away from the light, you’ll never see the shadows. Don’t blame the shadow on others. Sometimes others overshadow us, but often we are standing in our own sun. Sometimes, we are holding things up in front of us that block the sun. Just sometimes.

from 37 days