Certainty in Change
A reflection and remembering in a personal season of change.
My energy does not have to be divested in the past or future, just here right now in my body with each moment, one breath at a time.
In cliché: change is constant; inevitable; hard; necessary. In human nature: change is the confirmation of vitality. Change is also one of the most common origins for restlessness in my life. Maybe you too? Most, if not all, parts of ourselves are conditioned to be wary of change for its ability to disrupt our senses of self, security and stability. Through our lived experiences we understand change can be simultaneously exciting, expansive and desired, while also often complicated by grief, challenge/crisis, discomfort, loss and pain. (After all, biological disposition avoids change out of evolutionary protection and prevention. Our psyche has such specific needs.)
Yet consciously- and cognitively- we may understand that change is simultaneously our very nature… a perpetual guarantee. This is in direct design: we are the earth as she is of us, and the societies we are a part of too. We move through seasons of the land, so of course this is in microcosm in the bodies’ seasons— physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically.
But we forget, because many modern systems we are a part of do not revere change in forms that fall outside of the rewarded illusions of control and conquering. Systems of oppression continue to be the biggest distraction from this innate intelligence of soul through to bodies. Instead, we normalize the internalization of expecting and striving for machine-like performance and precision where there is a focus on constant output, ever-optimizing for better/faster/stronger/richer/more. The people and planet are exhausted and over-extracted; the degrees vary based on our choices and capacity, nuanced by our personal circumstance.
What if there was a more gentle, generative way to be in the face of change?
(There is no single-dimensional definition for this; those familiar with me and the work of The Rested Revolution know this. And, this question could be met with restriction or relaxation. Notice where you are right now. One of those realms, a blend, or other?)
I believe that whether change is unfurling from a personal or collective origin of experience, whether it is a degree of change in who we are or how we’re doing something, we are capable of deliberate perspectives and responding. To start, perhaps we grant ourselves grace and compassion in the face of adversity with courage, hope, joy and trust. And they are frequently simultaneously true and present all at the same time. We’re not bypassing or ignoring anything here. Even positive and wanted change can hold layers of their own weight.
Have you ever noticed how much energy can be unconsciously (understandably) drained into resisting or even denying change that is more difficult or complex? There’s nothing wrong or bad about this. And, the invitation of my musing and contemplation today is to remember: new moments are just that. To be new is “not existing before; made, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time.” So we’re not supposed to ace anything or rock it or really set any expectations at all.
It’s easy to spend time following the fixation of the thinking brain to make sense of, to quantify/measure and seek meaning, yet historically it’s only really robbed me of the present moments; discovery, wonder and actual experience. When I was young, I spent a lot of time daydreaming, planning and imagining what my life would look like. It was partially a response to my feeling isolated and misunderstood as a child of Taiwanese immigrant parents in North America as much as it was also part of my creativity and ability to envision what is not in front of me, still unseen and intangible. Then really interestingly in my late twenties and into my thirties each year with new experiences and different developments of my life, I noticed more and more how stunted the envisioning was. The reaction was to try to grasp more frantically, to squeeze my hold tighter on past comparisons and references. It didn’t serve me at all. Because each change was beyond what a former version- or even the present- could anticipate.
These days, I see refractions of that in my close communities and the world around me. It’s so natural yet I am optimistic about a more loving way to practice the approach. Even in the world’s struggle with COVID-19 ‘unprecedented’ was redundant and irrelevant before it was over-used and over-iterated as an obvious adjective. Every single moment of our human experience is unprecedented. Always. Even if we engage in activities that have been done before by others, it is uniquely our own because we have our own subjective ways of being.
So I’ve been unraveling these deep layers, and so much of it is dying, so I’ve been busy putting it to rest and tending to myself in the process. The grief is deep, feeling like I’m engaging in something ‘too good to be true’ while knowing nothing will ever be the same. The fear is strong, there are many aspects of myself that are apprehensive about putting down what has been familiar and protective for so long. The loss is real, I have allowed certain relationships to fade because I am no longer the same person who can show up in them. The discomfort has been overwhelming and disorienting; I questioned whether I was insane for examining myself this much and this deeply. There’s so much to acknowledge, and I marvel at the beauty of my life. And as I continue to navigate my own season of change, I allow the new moments to inform me without my precursors of labelling or older metrics. This is another form of practice. This is another form of my restedness in a full life, in a full world.
