“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
“If everything you think you know makes your life unbearable, would you change?”
― Tracy Chapman, Change
It was a beautiful day at the beach: clear skies, a warm but not overbearing sun, the air was moving but there was no strong wind to speak of. After a lovely nap, I got up from under my umbrella, approached the shore, and walked into the ocean. The water was fresh and cool, a perfect temperature for swimming. I made my way through the breaking waves, jumping the low ones, diving through the high ones until I reached the calmer water where I turned onto my back and let myself float, embracing the stillness in my body, bobbing slightly with the rhythm of the water. When I was ready to head back, I flipped over and rode a wave into the shore. Emerging from the water, I looked around for my umbrella but could not find it. At first I worried that it had fallen over or been blown away, but the wind was not that strong. I started walking up and down the beach and eventually I spotted it, nearly a hundred yards north of where I came out of the water. In the time I was floating on my back, the current had moved me nearly the length of a football field without me noticing that I had moved at all.
I have experienced this phenomenon dozens of times in my life - both in the ocean and out of it. From my perspective I am staying exactly where I am, where I have always been, but the circumstances around me shift, change, and suddenly I look up and notice that I too have been moved, that I am, in fact, not where I started but somewhere very different. Sometimes the tide can be so strong that I can swim in the direction that I know is north but still when I look up, when I leave the water, I can find myself south of the place I started. Sometimes the shift in the landscape around me can be so dramatic, that I can think I am making decisions that are in line with my values, but when I look up, I notice that in this current context a choice that in a previous moment was in support of my values, no longer is.
Change, as Octavia Butler reminds us, is the only lasting truth. It is the only constant. And yet, we humans are so resistant to it. We try so hard to hold on to things as we understand them to be that we can fall into a delusion, that we can find ourselves acting as though things are as they once were, and not as they currently are today.
In order to keep up with the change that naturally occurs in the world outside of us, we have to continue changing our understanding of who we are, of how we need to move in order to navigate the changing environments we find ourselves in. But changing the way we do things, changing the way we see ourselves in the world can feel so threatening to who we understand ourselves to be. And so we resist changing. But since change is inevitable, when we try to stay the same we are simply relinquishing our agency in determining how we are going to change, we are letting the changing world change us.
If I know and accept that I will change, that I have to change, the question then becomes: how do I ensure that the changes I that I am making are in line with who I want to be, who I want to continue becoming? How do I change in ways that support my growth towards the person I aspire to be, towards the world I want to see? How do I ensure that when I change, those changes are in line with my values? And when the ground itself is changing how do I know if I’m being adaptive, responsive, or reactive? How do I know if I’m giving in, if I’m ceding ground that I need, or if I’m making a sound strategic choice that will help me in the long run? When in a turbulent moment, when the tide is strong, how do I know if I’m staying on course, or if I’m being moved in a direction I wouldn’t want to go? And if it’s not only that the tide is moving me but that there is also someone on the shore moving my umbrella, how do I determine which direction to move in? How do I navigate change when the signposts are moving too?
The first thing that I know to do is to get myself to a place where I can take a breath. It might take a minute. It might require waiting for the ground to stop shaking, or finding a place where the ground can offer a moment of steadiness even through the shaking. Once I am breathing deeply, I then lift my gaze, expand my field of vision, look for signposts that are further out, that may not be so easily moved. For me this means looking at the current moment in the widest historic lens that I have, it means taking the time to see clearly where we actually are and what is actually going on, it means centering myself in the values that I hold most dear, it means accepting that the strategies and approaches that worked for me in the past may not be the ones that will work for me now, and most of all it means finding other people that I trust so we can navigate this changing environment together.