Ebb & Flow: How to Embrace The Fluctuations of Change
Resistance like everything has two sides. Resistance can give the impression of protection, while other forms of it may be defensive. To understand resistance most clearly means to understand the physics of a bell curve. A type of order and balance in the natural world. The bell curve promises that each and every opposite has an other, and that other is on a spectrum of points in relation to its opposite. We are free to slide left to right, and right to left. Magically we exist and coincide with billions of people exactly this same way.
From energy to gender identity, from wealth to world politics, even self development and personal preference; everything considers the scale, but what happens if we resist acknowledging the scale? does it still exist ? What happens if we only consider ourselves, instead of the “us” in our relationship to the world or each other? Forget those across the country, what about those closest to us? What about the people we love most in our orbit? or the people that love us most. What happens if others have to slide around us because we refuse to move, freezing in place or resisting? Are we keeping ourselves from experiencing our best possible life? are we keeping others from experiencing?
We are born to experience this world. Yet sometimes it seems we are we keeping ourselves from it. We stop ourselves from growing by thinking we have grown enough. We stop ourselves from forming new and bright ideas and interactions because we are impatient, and give up. Sadly, in the age of instant and un-fulfilled we have begun limiting our deepest growth. It is being misinformed that is dangerous, and being stubborn which is deadly.
So who are the innocent ones? The innocent are those who are incapable of educating themselves are rely on others. The possibility of their education lies in the hands of those (or someone) who might have their own agenda or version of acceptable.
But, deep truth is innate. Newtons Third Law states, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
To withhold or resist is still an action. To do things behind someones back are still actions, even if the person doesn’t know about it. It’s not karma that keeps watch, but physics.
In todays throw away world it’s easy to forget what’s what’s important. True growth is not about cleaning your physical closet, but ones emotional closet. True growth isn’t about the face, but the base. True growth fucking hurts, and when someone has gone through it and come out alive, they should be celebrated.
Life is not about doing what others think is right. Life is about living a life that is true to you, and true growth is about being responsible in learning all the rules. By having all the game pieces, and hoping others play right by the rules. Not only the rules of the land, but the rules of the heart, and unseen world too; physics, philosophy, and science. We are not merely occupying our own precious bodies, but inhabiting a delicate balance that includes each other.
When I was a child I use to think racism and prejudice would become extinct by the time I “grew up”. My experience with the world was so idyllic and naive. That was in part because of my own privilege. Yes, I think other races can be privileged. It wasn’t until I grew up, and witnessed peoples resistance to me that I felt my most otherness. My otherness, the thing which makes me American.
Instead of growing up to experience the bell curve for all it could offer (limitless possibilities) I was navigating the fear others felt, or judgments, retaliations, and resistance. When I was a child my father, an immigrant, use to say, "Movement is survival,” and when I asked him to elaborate he’d say, "Evolution, we change to survive."
I know now, he was right.
I thought about the generations of people who moved across continents, across the United States, throughout time. I thought about the various conditions of life. I thought about expanding through heartbreak. I learned the difference between “a growth mindset,” and a “fixed mindset.”
Creatures that went extinct didn’t or couldn’t grow. I was afraid this could happen to me or people I know, which is why I wrote this article in the first place.
It’s bad enough to grow apart. We should try and grow together. We should feel safe sharing exactly where we are or where we have come from. We should share where we want to go.
Throughout history, there have been many instances of loss, or division which could have been avoided by resistance.
I bought this magnet once,
“When one door of closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us” -Helen Keller
We all experience change on a macro level and a micro level. It’s natural and happening all around us always. Have you ever tried to un-notice something? To un-notice, something is still noticing it. The same goes for thinking. Try not to think. Try not to see. Try not to change. No matter how stubborn we are, at some level change will happen. We can either go with it or against it.
We practice these unconscious and conscious happenings regularly, in multiple layers and directions.
The term “train of thought,” is the recognition that every thought proceeds the next. So why not have good thoughts? Why not having loving thoughts? why resist?
We go through life, good or bad, with or without, we continue each day moving towards an end, our end.
The baby becomes an old man, and even though the old man might become a baby, the circle doesn’t continue back around into the mother’s womb but instead ends in the grave. So what is the best way to move on? with change.
Don’t fight it. Let go.
Change is natural (heartache, job loss, illness, moving to a new place), Change doesn’t set out to harm us intentionally (or others) it merely allows for the possibility of life’s design to prosper. The concept of "design" itself is never permanent, so nothing is lost, only evolved.
Someone had asked me once,
"If a leaf falls
from a tree
into a river
does it climb back
up to the tree?"
Go ahead and visualize that for a moment. A delicate leaf, veins on both sides. Imagine the paper-thin skin, compressed between multiple atmospheres. Pressures. Gravity.
The leaf succumbs as gracefully as possible, the way a child floats in the air momentarily after leaping from a diving board, or a baby wobbles seeking balance in his firsts steps, or a father feels flying over the continent to see his child.
Each is as free as they will ever be in those moments, no longer attached to the worries which haunt them. They move without restraint or hesitation. They move within the movement.
Now, imagine existing with that much assurance and grace whenever we wanted? all while keeping in mind the leaf and the powers of transition. For a brief amount of time in a deteriorating life, the leaf exists between worlds.
No, the leaf never climbs back up to the tree. It goes with the flow. Perhaps, into a stream where it will travel with the water. Perhaps, the stream will turn into a river, or perhaps, the river will turn into a roaring ocean, or maybe none of those things.
Sure, it’s difficult to imagine relinquishing control of our life. It’s difficult to imagine what our journeys will look like, but, ultimately until we let go of our imaginary trees, we won’t know. Until we think to walk or leap, or even watch our past burn up into ash, like the knowledge in the library, we won’t know where we will land, and it’s all land until the end when it’s the most significant leap of faith we hope.
If there is ever a time we might feel worried or anxious in regards to change, remember the leaf. I finish with this quote by a man who recognized the freedom of living between worlds. A man who ultimately lost the ability to walk but could still enjoy traveling by plane, Steven Hawking,
"Although I cannot move
and I have to speak through a computer,
in my mind I am free."
