Running To Stand Still

The only thing that’s constant is change.  I recently heard this sentiment expressed in response to someone talking about the difficulty of dealing with change. I think it was meant to be reassuring, but it might have landed wrong. Think about it–I’m going through a hard time, I’m a ball of stress, and you say I’m always going to feel like this?

I’ve been thinking about this idea lately. I don’t know if it’s because I’m going through a few changes myself or because I’ve noticed that it’s not limited to me. It seems all my friends are experiencing change in their lives, too. And wasn’t that also the case three months ago? Six months ago?

Though perhaps so frequently used it can’t help but sound trite, the statement that change is constant seems undeniably true. In both minor and significant ways, something is always changing in our lives, year to year, day to day, moment to moment. I am just getting settled into a new daily routine with my sweet old dog, and already it’s time to send her back to her dad’s house. I was just starting to get back into a steady yoga habit when my allergies went into overdrive, eliminating downward facing dog and all other inversions from my practice. Or I can consider more meaningful examples of change in career, relationship, and sense of home. How I’d just started to pursue my own friendships and interests when my now ex-husband and I uprooted to move across the country, unconsciously reinforcing our codependent ways.

I’ve logically accepted the fact that change is constant, so I feel like I should not be threatened when I’m unable to find the ground under my feet. Yet for some reason I am always in a mad rush to get to the other side. Instinctually I cling to this notion that once I get through a particular change, I will be able to plant my feet on the ground. I’ll feel stable and all will be well and life will be easier. I just need to get through this move, this schedule change, this career transition, this relationship, this period of mourning. Yet the changes keep coming–sometimes by choice but often not.

We are quick to identify change as an agent of fear, stress, or disappointment when it creates hardship in our lives, and these are legitimate feelings. But we are not being honest with ourselves if we think we can escape them by outrunning change and somehow finding a place to stand still. In my personal experience, I have found no evidence that such a place exists.

So how can we find more ease in this constant sea of change? We can start by abandoning our struggle to swim to shore, as its solidness is an illusion. Instead we can learn to float, riding the crest and trough of each wave as it passes. If we look to the horizon, there are endless waves headed in our direction. Instead of thrashing about, fighting to maintain our course, we could relax and be carried.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t get upset or sad or feel other strong emotions, but it means we keep them in perspective. We don’t create the expectation that we’ll be happy if we can just get to where we want to go. Instead, we feel whatever we are feeling and remember that it’s transient. We look around at where we are and see what we can appreciate about the place we are in. We remind each other that change is constant.

Sending Out an SOS

For several days last week I felt starkly unlike myself. I felt numb to most everything. It was as if I was no longer inside my body. The only time I felt like I was living my life was when I walked around the neighborhood with my dog–beyond that I felt like my life was living me. I was essentially a bystander instead of an active participant.

I felt some amount of accomplishment for not beating myself up further for feeling down, which is a behavior pattern I’m working to reset. Yet after a few days of experiencing these feelings and not quite knowing what to do about my funk, I text a good friend to ask if she had ever felt this way. She had, of course, and freely admitted it. Then she asked me a question of her own. “What is bringing you joy these days?”

I quickly wrote back, indicating that I didn’t have the time or resources for finding joy at the moment. I was on week three of an incredibly restrictive diet designed to identify food sensitivities, which basically left me hungry 24/7 and annihilated my social life. My schedule was also in shambles because my dog had moved back in with me after a year of living with my ex, and I’d been working a lot of extra hours to facilitate a move that my company was making to a new location. I rattled off these reasons to her without even thinking about them, because they were on my mind daily.

She replied, “It all sounds rather intense, Kate.”

I read her tiny text bubble twice. Then I reread my giant balloon. She was right. It did sound rather intense. When I actually paused to think about it, my routine and sense of normal had changed significantly in a short time. I was clearly in a period of transition. As I thought about how stressful change of any kind can be, two more recent examples popped into my mind.

My friend’s simple response gave me a fresh perspective on what I was going through–and it also gave me an idea. When I woke up the next morning, I made a list in my journal of all the changes I was experiencing. Then, for good measure, I added any major decisions I needed to make within the next two months. My final list had twelve items on it, from small things (failure to get to the gym) to significant things (did I mention the elimination diet?) to things that I thought were small but actually turned out to be significant (like a drastic new hairstyle that may or may not have been a mistake). Regardless of size or importance, I captured everything that was creating change in my life.

When I put down my pen and read through the list, I felt an immediate sense of relief. Now that the sources of upheaval were all on paper, I didn’t have to actively carry them in my mind every moment of the day. And now that it was all on paper, I could clearly see how my daily life had been disrupted and how that naturally created the disconnect I was feeling.

This exercise allowed me to look at myself with more kindness and compassion. I wanted to give myself some words of encouragement or a good hug, because that’s what I would do for any friend who recounted that list. By discovering and understanding the root of my feelings, I felt a glimmer of aliveness again. I made a small shift from bystander to participant. I even started to see the opportunities that could be found in this time of transition, if I could remain open to them.

So when you are having one of those days or weeks or months when you are feeling off, try not to be critical of yourself. The first step of the practice is to acknowledge our feelings and accept them as human and natural, whatever they may be. Then slowly, as we honestly dig deeper than our feelings, we can start to address the underlying issues that are the heart of the matter.

Just Keep Swimming

One of the first entries in The Book of Awakening is titled "Life in the Tank." In it Mark Nepo writes an anecdote about the unexpected behavior of his friend’s fish. The friend put his fish in the bathtub temporarily while he scrubbed out their tank. When he was ready to put the fish back, he found that they had stayed in one small area of the tub, swimming in circles that were roughly the size of their little tank. The fish weren’t darting about–enjoying all that extra room–but had remained within the amount of space that was familiar. Observing this behavior, Mark Nepo penned some beautiful insights about how we as humans also confine ourselves to what we know, afraid to explore possibilities that may challenge our identities or expectations.

A tattered sticky note is hanging off that page, where years ago I enthusiastically scribbled my initial reaction to the passage:

Fearing life outside the tank makes your world small. Be open to the world around you and the possibilities it may present, even when it pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Reading these words again this past week, I felt a sweet sense of nostalgia for all the times in my life when I have been faced with the choice to remain comfortable in my small world or challenge my assumptions about myself. It was rarely ever an easy decision, but in hindsight it has always been worth it.

In my adolescent years, how I viewed myself was largely shaped by what my family, friends, and teachers thought of me. I unconsciously developed a particular identity and set of expectations about how I was supposed to act based on this input. I was smart. I was not an athlete. I was quiet. I was not a leader. I followed the rules. I was not a risk taker. I sulked instead of standing up for myself. I felt an obligation to meet the expectations of the adults in my life, not to follow my own desires. Whether or not these statements were true, I had come to believe them as facts about my teenage self.

Then I moved away from home to attend college. Suddenly I was dumped out of my little tank and into the bathtub. I left a town with a population of 11,000 to live in a city with 200,000 people. Instead of fifteen classes to choose from there were fifteen hundred. I was enrolled at a university with a diverse range of students from all over the world as opposed to my homogeneous high school. 

Feeling uncertain about my new surroundings and how I fit into them, I kept my head down and stuck to the facts. I was smart, I was quiet, and I followed the rules. I clung to my older brother and the friends from high school who were also attending the university. I quickly made a routine of class and studying, eating at the same cafeteria next to my dorm each day. I was swimming in little circles, even though there was so much space to explore.

I could have stayed in that small world until I graduated, but fortunately it didn’t take long for my curiosity to get the better of me. Feeling stunted by the small, predictable world I had organized, I was forced to consider that I might have my facts wrong. I started to notice interesting people and events on campus. I stopped trying to be invisible and made small talk with my classmates. I began to find opportunities to try new things that appealed to me at a deeper level than the “facts” I knew about myself. And as I did, the identity I had constructed for myself started to shift.

Maybe I wasn’t athletic, but I loved watching hockey and had always wished I had learned to play. So I joined a recreational ice hockey team. Maybe I wasn’t the type to break the rules, but I started going to parties and drinking with my new friends. Maybe the adults in my life thought I should be an engineer, but I applied for admittance to the elementary education program. Maybe the old labels didn't quite fit anymore, and it was time to listen to my own heart. It wasn't long before I was swimming laps around the whole bathtub.

And so it has happened time and time again in my life. Just when I start to get cozy with my ideas about who I am and how I engage with the world, I make a decision that throws me into a bigger tank. Whether it was moving across the country on my own, getting married, taking a new job, or living alone for the first time in my life, I can look back at each transition and see the opportunities it provided for me to question my assumptions about who I am and to explore who I want to be.

Along with a host of other things, I have realized that I am smart and moderately athletic. I am a quiet leader. I am the kind of person who speaks up when she or someone else is treated unfairly–most of the time. I make decisions based on what I want, not what others want for me.

I am both grateful and excited that who I am will constantly evolve, so long as I am willing to push myself to keep swimming.