Learning to Change

“Change is the only constant in life” -Heraclitus

I’ll be honest in admitting that I’ve never quite been sure whether to be utterly annoyed by this fact or it gives me an incredible amount of hope. Truth be told, things always change, and there’s an absolute bittersweet quality to this fact - in times of struggle, change is a welcome friend and in good times, change can seem a cruel reality. The dichotomy of change is that it happens whether we want it to or not; but we do actually have a choice when it comes to managing it.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher of the above quote, also had another worth considering:

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

After all, let’s just start by considering ourselves at a human level and in how change manifests with a very simple tool: our breath. It’s estimated we experience around 23,000 breath cycles per day! Of course, this drastically varies by person, size and a number of other factors, but let’s just take a moment to marvel at the fact that in this startling large number, no two breaths are exactly the same. Much like the river’s constant flow, we too are in a state of constant change. Even in moments of “stillness” movement still lives and breathes.

So, back to the topic at hand. Can we ‘learn’ to change?

Well, if experience is our best teacher, these last few months have certainly proven that the answer would be a resounding YES. (Of course, whether we had much choice with regard to this change is a whole other topic!) What we usual don’t notice in this process of change is just that…the process. Any activity has what we can call three stages: 1.) the BEFORE, 2.) DURING, and 3.) the AFTER. We’re really good at catching the after (hence the well-used phrase that hindsight is 20/20). Sometimes if we’re really connected, present and focused we can tap in to the during. But the before is tricky.

This is partially because we don’t compartmentalize anything we do - and (back to the constantly flowing river image) it all becomes quite fluid. Which means an after is actually also a before; and a before is also an after. So when we’re aiming to tap into this process of processing change, one of our aims might be to focus on just letting there BE a before. Create a little more space; a moment to establish that we choose to engage in part of the cycle of our all-the-time flow. Or just sitting with the after and for a few moments, check in with how that feels.

In some ways I guess it becomes an “one after the other, all together” sort of experience. And maybe that’s the learning. A little like stepping into the river and seeing where you end up once you cross over to the other side.

Unprecedented Times

Let’s play a game, shall we? It’s called “Never Have I Ever.”

Never have I ever been alive during a global pandemic.

Never have I ever worried about getting sick because I left my house to go grocery shopping.

Never have I ever experienced a world where there just wasn’t any other news to report.

Never have I ever had to go over three weeks devoid of physical contact with another human being.

Never have I ever felt like I’m living in some sort of bad dream.

Are you out already? Oh. I am too.

Perhaps ironically, I played this game this weekend, with some friends over a FaceTime call while celebrating my 36th birthday. We were trying to be silly and take our minds off the fact that everything we’re dealing with is on one hand totally unbelievable, and on another one of the scariest occurrences of our lives. And on yet another (because right now I wouldn’t even flinch if you told me we actually have three hands) I think what we’re dealing right now is absolutely for a reason.

My "emotional receptors" are quite active: overly alert, acutely responsive, and firing easily these days. I've been struck recently about the levels of grief that accompany this pandemic - the barrage of losses we are experiencing at the moment - and how easy it becomes to just "deal with it" or "figure it out" without taking the time to honor and accept the devastating nature of so many of these losses and accompanying changes being thrust upon us.

My friend sent me an article on grief a number of weeks ago, one that actually labeled it as "Embodied Remembering" - for which I found an incredible resonance. We’re quick to forget that the body doesn’t lie, that we can’t hide what we are experiencing on a physical level, and that our bodies are no doubt in a state of total shock at the moment. Our parasympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight fear response) is probably in a state of near constant triggering for many of us; and for good reason. We’re dealing with inputs we’ve never dealt with before, at level that’s unimaginably heightened.

We are unbelievably resilient and quick to adapt: important survival skills for ourselves and the current state of the world. But often, we’re lacking in the tools to process our body’s state of pure shock right now. For some, our bodies may even be giving us pushback - in the form of pain, fatigue, or even physical anxiousness. Maybe you have tools to help adjust to these unprecedented times, or maybe not. If not, try to really “do” the things you’re doing throughout the day:

If you’re sitting, really sit. Feel the seat of a chair under you.

If you’re walking, feel that you have feet that are connected with the ground.

If you’re lying down, revel in that fact that even if it’s just for those moments, you don’t have to hold yourself up.

At the least, take a moment to consider that just remembering to breathe will help you pause and reconnect, to yourself, and to the universal life force all around us.

It’s never been more apparent that we are all so much more the same than we are different; the far-reaching effects of what we are dealing with don’t discriminate - we’ve all been fairly stopped in our tracks, and if we listen closely, something is being asked of us…

So…what’s being asked of you?