Change
(Audio: link)
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Membership/M15-Thoughts-On-Change.mp3]
Link M15-Thoughts-On-Change.mp3
How do you handle change? How do you navigate change with courage and kindness?
I’ve been struggling for the past year with the challenge of change. Mine is a transitional generation. The generation before ours had a fixed cultural, professional and moral coda. It was all made up, and neither good nor bad, but it was a fixed compass in the scary world. It was focusing. No one knew what to do but at least they knew what to do.
During the intervening generation this world of a unified culture, of a pax Americana vision, of a moral manifest destiny began to splinter. Maybe the lack of a unifying external threat or the incredible bounty and lack of scarcity in our lives gave us room to think.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s individual-specific. Maybe it’s something that each subsequent generation sees or feels or imagines as they age into the horizon. It’s a universal angst for us. What now? I never expected to be alive now, at this age staring down an unimagined hallway into the future. Which door should I try?
That is the trick of change. Everyone will tell you that we live in a changing world. That’s like saying ‘water is wet’. The world has always been changing and it always will be. The waves and cycles of change swirl like magnified chaotic shadows across geographies, institutions and cultures. Sometime in the sharp form of abrupt revolutions and sometimes with the creeping frost of a retreating glacier.
Change happens.
The old joke is people embrace change, but only when it happens to someone else! You need to embrace change because you can’t avoid it. Or at least plan for change. Or at least prepare for change.
The bigger question is around personal change. Because you can’t control external change. You might be able to step out of the way of external change or profit from it but you can’t avoid it. Earthquakes, new inventions and commodities markets are immune to your individual wants.
You can only control how you react to change and how you create change internally, to yourself and the people you touch.
This is a big choice and a big responsibility.
We can control internal change, or more accurately some internal change. And the changes we implement to ourselves and our lives will influence our world.
This is the big question. Should we change? How and how much should we change? What change are we capable of?
I can do 20 pushups every morning and this will cause my body to change. I can eat salads for lunch and this too will cause changes. I can meditate every day and it will cause changes to my brain. I change from a frown to a smile and it will change my outlook on the day.
The challenge has always been for people of my age and position across time that the perceived risk of change increases. We have accumulated certain things, certain relationships and certain levels of attainment. We have become quite comfortable and attached to these things.
The question is, do these things, attainments and relationships own you now? Like a high maintenance garden that constantly needs weeding. The fear of losing them through abrupt changes is the mirrored image of the freedom gained from letting the garden weeds grow as they please and selling the garden!
Your ability to embrace change when you’re older is constrained by your perception of the road ahead. When we have moved down the timeline of our lives and can see peeking over the next hill the promise of decrepitude and physical oblivion.
Is there’s less time left to waste? Is the hourglass is running out? Is there’s less time to recover from an ill-chosen path of change? Is there’s less time to wait out the risk and compound the rewards? Is the on-ramp effort of new endeavors too large an investment of what’s left?
These things add to the perceived risk of change.
“I could lose what I’ve worked for…”
“I would have to start at the bottom…”
“I’ve got 30 years invested in this relationship, surely that is worth something?”
“I’ve only got so many games left…”
But, really, that’s lazy thinking.
We know deep in our hearts that these are the nagging, whispered thoughts of scarcity. We know in our hearts that there is no less risk today than there was when we were 18 or 19 or 30 or 40. What we have does not define who we are. The important things that we have attained cannot be taken away. If we act with kindness and love everything will be sustained.
As the rope runs out and history stacks upon history there is also an urgency to change.
“I better not waste time thinking about it and just get on with it?” You had better jump on the change now and get started. The clock is ticking.
It takes courage to change. It takes passion to change. Passion is not something you are given. Passion is something you find and cultivate. Passion is something you create. If you cultivate enough passion you can balance the fear of change.
They say you have to live as if there are no consequences. They say you have to live as if there is an abundance of time. They say you can create your own future and reality. But, it’s hard when the world is full of consequences, time is finite and the futures stretches ahead murky and unknowable. It makes you want to hide under your desk from change.
The key, apparently is to live in alignment with what you think is the right thing to do. That way independent of wasting time and dire consequences you will have at least done the right thing. You may not have a place to sleep, but you’ll be able to sleep at night. It seems questionably accurate logic.
If you act as if you have nothing to lose then you will lose nothing. If you act with love even the mistakes will be acts of love. Even a potential trail of destruction you leave may be colored with acts of kindness.
Then we come full circle again to the question. Why is it hard to change? Why when even in your heart you know it’s the right thing to do? Is it because at the end of the day it feels like a selfish act? We are told the path to fulfillment is in the service of others and sometimes change feels like the service of self.
Is it one of those situations where the change is necessary to enable a better life of service?
Change is hard. It always has been. At the same time resistance to change is folly. Why not drive your own change? Why not create the change you want to see in the world and perhaps in doing so create a clearing for others to follow?
Here’s the call to action: Step boldly forward. Blow shit up. Revel in the chaos of change.