Change is inevitable and scary. It is the source of our anxiety and often we have no control over when it happens. The recent tsunami in Japan was a sobering reminder that sometimes everything you know to be real can be gone in an instant. So there’s fast change, and there’s slow, lumbering change. A gradual change for the worse happening so slowly we don’t even realize we’re smack-dab right in the middle of it, sinking down into the ooze.This is the sucky part; when you wake up to find you have hated your job for 20 years, gained 30 lbs, and your fantasies about your partner are no longer hot and passionate – but rather about how awesome it would be if they ran off to join the circus and you were free to start over. So that is the real question: at what point do you look around and notice you are on the wrong path? Hopefully if is before you have walked on the path so long you are too depleted to turn and go another way, before you start saying things like “Well, I have already invested this much, I may as keep going.”, before you are so far from where you wanted to be that you don’t even recognize yourself. Would the life you have now been acceptable to you 10 years ago? If the answer is yes, good for you. If the answer is maybe not, then perhaps it’s time to take a look at how you got here. I love change. Love it. I mean really, I am on my third marriage, I just had two babies in two years – six years after I thought I was done having kids, have moved across the country and the ocean, and I have never had rooms in my house stay the same color for more than two years. I don’t even put glass over paintings I create because I may want to go back and just mix it up a bit. I even have a hand signal to indicate it’s time to “change it up” – point both index fingers up in the air and quickly alternate the hands up and down. My husband has come to recognize this as meaning we are about to move the furniture or take a new class, and just holds on for the ride – relieved the change up is not of him. I realize I am in the minority here, but I embrace change, I am not sure why. Maybe it is due to my chronic introspection. Maybe it has something to do with what my Mom would have called being “too stupid to be scared”, I tend to leap in with both feet just trusting the universe will cradle me into a soft landing. Most people do not have this much faith in the universe. Most people fear change because it makes sense to do so. Survival instincts tell us to be cautious of the unknown – but often what is really unknown to us is just how miserable we have become. I have a friend who was telling me the other day about how her health problems  cleared up when she made a dietary  change. When I asked about her health problems, she began listing them – and listing them – and listing them. About the time I started feeling like I was listening to a late night commercial running through the possible side effects of a new drug to cure elongated earlobes, I started thinking “Holy shit – how far do we travel into the land of pain and suffering before we start realizing we are on a crazy train and we need to change course?” I have another friend who confided in me that it was not until after her husband left her that she realized she had cried every day for the last 2 years of her marriage. Every day. And she didn’t realize it until after change was suddenly thrust upon her. It is hard to notice everything going down the toilet when you are busy spinning around and around. Once we realize it, because our spouses leave us, our bosses fire us, our doctors tell us we have six months to live, or maybe because we just have a moment of enlightenment, we often still choose not to change. We rationalize that with so much already invested, there is no point in changing horses midstream. Well, let me tell you something people – if your horse is stupid and unappreciative, if your horse doesn’t even know how to cross the stream in the first place without you actually carrying your horse, if the horse was never right for you anyway, but it was the only one in the stable and so you settled, if your horse isn’t working with you to cross the frigging stream in the best possible way – then changing horses mid-steam makes all the sense in the world. Staying on your horse and drifting further downstream for even another moment kind of makes you as dumb as the damned horse. Change is hard. As Buddha once said “It is easier to remain a grain of sand, but then you never get to be a pearl….” OK, Buddha never said that – I just made that up, but you get what I mean. Not making a choice in your life because you just can’t bear the change is not going to work. Pssst – change will happen anyway – you not making a choice simply means you will have no control over the direction. So think about it. Who do you want to be? How far are you from that person? What are you doing right now to get there? Think about this frequently, and if things in your life are not as good as they can be – change them. Get on another horse. If this seems too daunting a task, try moving your furniture around; it may be just the catalyst you need.

Tell your friends...