Accepting change
Change, it keeps coming, no matter how many times it has come before, it comes again. For change is life and resisting change is resisting the very essential element that life is made from.
And change, it will push and pull from within, force its way and transform. Does a worm long to become a butterfly? What choice does it have?
Change is so scary and mysterious; it shakes us, makes us feel uneasy, and yet it is so intriguing. We long for it when it is gone, we miss it when we feel dry, calling for it to come back again. And then it does and we dread it, as if it were not us who wanted it so much.
It comes with all its might, like a storm, strong and so determined.
Change, whether it is personal, emotional or physical; collective, political, or cultural, is always daunting.
It comes up, swelling like a wave, from within; you can feel it growing, you can feel its energy, its momentum, not sure how big or how strong it will be, a tingling feeling spreads, goosebumps, excitement mixed with anxiety creeps and fills you. You want that wave to break already and yet to enjoy the rise. Nothing will stop it; it rolls, and all you can really do is choose to enjoy it for it is taking you on a ride. How small you can choose to feel, how so very helpless and needy, so broken and lost, in the mess of powers and elements and energies. There you are, you can surf it and flow with it all the way through or you can resist and let it make you feel so weak and hopeless, so out of control, such a victim of the situation.
But in each and every single situation there YOU are, there is your choice, your unique attitude and point of view, your own voice, your own force, your stamina and all the wisdom and strength that you have gathered, there you are, face to face with it all. There you are feeling your own weight, as gravity pulls you, as the times move you. That change that is so inevitable, so ingrained into life. That which as much as you want to fight and reject, you simply cannot.
If we look at our own mind, the flow of our thoughts, that river of consciousness, we see how change is the very nature of the fundamental way we experience ourselves. Seeing consciousness as a river or flow is not something new, neither in Eastern philosophy nor in Western psychology. Buddhist teachings, for example, speak of the “mindstream”, a continuous flow of ever-changing moments of experience. In the West, William James (often referred to as the father of American psychology) described it as a “stream of consciousness” in his 1890 book The Principles of Psychology.
Anyone who has ever tried to sit in meditation has had the personal experience of their own mind, as an uncontrollable stream, which changes, moves, jumps around and transforms. If we dare to look back and self-explore, we may find that ideas, emotions and strong beliefs that we once had have completely changed. Even convictions that we were totally identified with at some point have changed: when we look back after a while, we notice how much they have changed, how we have changed, how our perspective has changed. And, if we are lucky, our understanding has evolved and grown.
Change is so frightening for it always threatens the status quo, which, no matter how challenging it may be, is familiar to us, giving us a sense of stability and safety. However, let us remember that the only way to grow is to allow change, and with no change or flow, we are left with nothing but a stagnant swamp.
