The Way Things Change
It all happened slowly. Maybe, it happened all at once. I can never remember how my life had changed in front of my eyes. I saw life through a completely new lens. Impermanence can make me feel unsteady. Like the ground under my feet has slowly softened and I’ve sunk too far in. The ground fully embraces me and clings my arms to my side.
It is ignorant and naive to think the whole world changes just for you. The world had not changed, but only the vessel through which I saw the world has changed. While the mirror reflected the same image back to me everyday, a new lens saw my face, one that seemed like a circus mirror all stretched and disoriented.
Where had I gone? In the time that I had spent surviving and taking life day by day, I became a completely different person from a year ago, months ago, even weeks ago. My old selves have been shed and tossed aside like dead skin. My funerals had come and passed.
Grapling with change is never an easy task. Like roots, still clinging to the dirt I was in, I was not ready to be placed in new soil. Even though there was promise of a fertile fresh newcoming, I felt displaced. I was being uprooted from my comfort, my so-called peace.
I had to find a way to accept the change. To learn to be less attached to life and more involved and present in each day. While the passage of time can feel nostalgic and sad, it is not a funeral of your past, it is a celebration of what is to come.
You have to look around yourself and see the good and bad. Look at what resides in the dark corners of yourself. Maybe you have been stagnated for too long. You sat with your pain and took the time to heal. Even after you had taken the time to preserve yourself, the darkness curled around you like a warm blanket and settled you into complacency. While it may feel comforting, you will only stay the same while the world continues on.
It takes strength to pull yourself out, but look at your pain, your darkness, your shame and say, “I know you are here, but I have plans”. You may not be the same as you were a year ago. You may carry shame or trauma in every part of your being. Still, this does not mean your dreams have to die with what has happened to you. Say to your pain, “I have plans and now you come with me”.
The freedom that comes with acceptance is radical. Sometimes, change can feel so hard because you may be leaving a life that you really love or people you really care for. Instead of continuing to try to open a locked door, think to yourself how blessed you are to even have gotten the chance to be loved deeply or to love what you do.
By accepting the parts of yourself you may have experienced or gained, you are accepting yourself wholly. You are allowing yourself to show up as you are rather than what you were or what you want to be.
For a new beginning by John O dahue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
Strike Out,
Written by: AK Anderson
Edited by: Hanna Bradford
Graphic by: Olivia Leggett
