|
CHANGE...
Why is it the hardest thing? One of my theories on why change is so hard is because...it's a confrontation with death.
This might sound extreme, but grief has taught me that there are all different kinds of death, and one of them is darkness. In childhood, this is represented by the difficulty of surrendering to sleep: the darkness is the literal separation of ourselves from consciousness, and from the loved ones who watch over that consciousness. In adulthood, darkness is otherwise known as uncertainty, or the unknown.
As I prepare to make a change, I can feel almost reckless with the uncertainty of it all. It's a feeling conjured by the 2018 documentary, Free Solo, (which impacted me so much I wrote a poem about it). My fear of heights is so intense, I felt vertigo just watching that film on a regular size movie screen. Although I have neither the interest or the skill in free soloing - i.e. climbing alone without any ropes or safety gear - I often return in my mind to the intensity of such a confrontation with mortality, with faith, and with trust.
I'm usually the type to say that real life is scary enough - I don't need to watch a horror film or ride a roller coaster to get my thrills - but there is also a limit to the healthy caution that fear lends us. A risk of limiting ourselves, keeping ourselves small. It's often hard for me to tell whether I'm in a healthy state of fear, or an imprisoning one.
Even when there is no risk of mortality involved in a change, risk-taking can inspire extremes of feeling. I was reminded this week that risk-taking, as a form of confronting our fear, doesn't have to be about hanging on by our finger pads to a cliff's edge. Risk-taking can be accompanied by gentleness.
For me, this means an approach to being in the darkness that embraces faith in all that we can and cannot see...acknowledges our interconnectivity with others...and also connects with our inner truth - a sense of knowing that I was raised on through the language of 'instinct,' often referred to as 'gut.'
That inner knowing is the part of us that can never be broken, or taken away. We keep it with us in the darkness, and carry it through the uncertainty. Even when we take a big leap, we keep that part of ourselves intact.
As we've listened to ourselves and to this community over the past weeks, we are preparing to make a change by adding a membership platform for community interaction. We've already begun to make some small changes (see updates on two of those below)...and we have more change and uncertainty ahead. Swimming in those possibilities, I pulled a card from a deck that feature's lines from one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton. It read: "may you kiss the wind then turn from it."
I've been puzzling over what it means. In the context of change, confronting the death-like fear of uncertainty, I think it is a blessing for us to know the source of creation is change, as it is life, as it is death. The transformation process is a great love story, as is our surrender to it, as is our vulnerability and powerlessness as we kiss the wind and turn to shelter in the path we were meant to take.
Some updates from last week...
/ Our What to Make for Dinner spreadsheet, a co-created space for readers to share weeknight dinner ideas (or tap into an infusion of inspiration from others), has 30+ entries so far, and you can help it grow.
2 / Bookworms - or those looking for a gift for a bookworm - can browse our very own 'book shop' through their affiliate program. Every selection has been read by one or both of us. We'll be updating it regularly with new titles, including things we mention here in the newsletter.
Transforming together,
Dor + Tay
|
