Tag: change

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At the precipice, we change.

The other day I walked into the living room and on the television was the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, the remake with Keanu Reeves. I remember I didn’t go see it when it came out, after getting panned by the critics. I sat on the couch, not really watching the show, but a singular line from the movie grabbed my attention. “At the precipice we change”. This struck me as profound. I have been sitting with what this really means, especially now, on a macro level when we are living in a world facing catastrophic issues like global warming, growing nationalism, nuclear proliferation, hunger, and poverty. And I began to wonder what has this meant for me personally and what is it that has been the impetus for change in my own life? Have I needed to be confronted with dire circumstances in order to create personal change or have I done so willingly and with some measure of grace?

Certainly, as a therapist working in the field of trauma and addiction, I have seen plenty of instances where despite the unimaginable consequences that can result from our behaviors, change does not come easily. Someone struggling with heroin addiction who continues to use despite dying multiple times and needing to be revived by Narcan. Or the person with a lung cancer diagnosis who continues to smoke. Even now, in my own life, as I struggle yet again with my use of sugar as a coping strategy, knowing full well the potential long-term negative outcomes, it continues to be hard to stop. These though are easier to comprehend; addictions hijack the brain’s reward circuitry often rendering our best intentions futile. But we do this in so many other areas of our life as well. We know what we may need to do at work or in our personal relationships to avoid being fired or prevent the demise of a beloved relationship, but those changes can feel insurmountable.

Perhaps too there are gradations on the road to our precipice and how quickly or slowly we heed the warning, or even if we ever do at all. I certainly have heard stories of people surviving near death situations who completely change their lives. Their brush with mortality bringing with it a deeper understanding of the things in life that hold value and importance. The recognition that our time on this earth is limited and we will run out of chances to change. The research done with those at the end of their lives show some universal truths around what matters. Our relationships, how we spend our time, how we show up and be present in our lives and our ability to cultivate a sense of purpose and meaning seem to be where we carry most of our regrets.

Instead of asking myself if I would change at the precipice, I wish instead my life was lived being informed by this inevitability. The precipice will come. I imagine I would live my life in such a way that I were more ready for this eventuality. Each breath measured not in years, but in moments where I was able to show up more fully to the unfolding of my life. Welcoming what is without judgment and increasing my capacity to hold the paradox of our fragile human condition- that to truly understand the infinite beauty of the light, we must also be willing to embrace the darkness.

We live in a world that encourages us to stay on this never-ending quest to maintain near constant states happiness and self-fulfillment. We chase all the outside things we imagine will keep the darkness at bay and far from our consciousness. We seek to create the illusion of the perfect life, post it all to social media as if we believed that if we could attain enough likes we could escape the precipice altogether. But it is the very knowledge of the precipice that has the power to save us.

I read a recent article on climate change, alarming in its predictions. The author concluding, like so many other scientists have, that it is very possible we are at the precipice of human survival. As we face global catastrophic suffering as a result of climate change due to our tragic inability to make those needed changes, we choose instead to continue to turn a collective blind eye to the impending crisis. Our insatiable desire to fix what is broken in us, the hole inside so vast we are willing to fill it with the very things that will keep us from what matters most. The quest for money and power will never heal what hurts us most. We stay on the desperate path of finding things to mask and cover our deepest wounds. We pollute our bodies and we heap more and more trash onto our aching souls. Greed becomes the poison we take, erroneously thinking it will save us. Like heroin in our veins, the relief is only temporary as it kills the organism it relies upon for its very survival.

The crisis of climate change is, at the end of the day, the story of what it means to be human. Do we begin the arduous task of turning inward, bravely assessing the damage we have done and choosing to believe that we are indeed capable of lovingly and fiercely committing to this process of offering unconditional love, to ourselves and indeed to all of humanity? When we are faced with the precipice, what will we choose? The time is now. We are here.

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One small change can change everything (The Butterfly Effect) or how to be more like Rosa Parks

Butterfly Effect: The phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

At times I wonder how many of my everyday decisions seem to be made with very little care. I imagine the myriad of choices I am faced with on a daily basis and think to myself that they will never amount to much in the grand scheme of things and so they pass without second thought. I save my sleepless nights and relentless worrying for the kind of decisions I believe are big enough to be worth suffering over- getting married, having kids or changing jobs.

But what if I believed that not just how my life unfolded, but perhaps the fate of the world rested on the cumulative effect of our smaller day to day decisions. Think about this for a minute. There have been many times when a seemingly inconsequential choice I made opened up my life to unexpected opportunities and taken me down roads I would have never even imagined for myself. The theory goes that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa today has the power to cause a hurricane later down the road in another part of the world. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings in just the right place at just the right time, the hurricane would never have happened. That is the mystery and magic of the Butterfly Effect.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Although she was a civil-rights activist before her arrest, in her autobiography she writes that her choice to remain seated that day was not premeditated. After working a long day at a Montgomery department store, sitting in a row of seats designated for ‘colored’ passengers, Rosa decided she would not give up her seat to the standing white passengers on that crowded bus that day. When the driver asked her why she did not stand up, she replied that she did not think she should have to. She was arrested, taken to police headquarters and released on bail later that night. I think it is important to remember that Rosa had previous run-ins with this particular bus driver and knew how dangerous the climate in the South could be for a back woman. When Rosa made that fateful decision I doubt she could have ever imagined how her refusal to give up her seat would start a chain of events that would not only change her life, but would change a nation.

I am not arguing that what she faced was a small or insignificant decision. But as a black woman living in the South, racial inequality was woven into the very fabric of the world she lived and the gross injustices she would face were an everyday occurrence. Why would this day be any different from her perspective? She could not have possibly predicted how her decision to remain seated would spark a movement that would reverberate around the world.

So why does this matter and how is the Butterfly Effect important to us all? I think about the “Me Too” movement and the story of Harvey Weinstein as an example. Each time a powerful man like Quentin Tarantino or Matt Damon, both who admittedly knew of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior chose to look the other way, they all but ensured there would be another victim. Their cowardly decision to convince themselves that this was not their problem and that staying uninvolved held no great consequence, further perpetuated a culture that allowed Harry Weinstein to continue down his destructive path. The ripple effect from our refusal to confront blatant abuse of power has normalized the unacceptable and abhorrent and emboldened all the Harvey Weinstein’s of the world to continue to abuse and exploit the most vulnerable.

But imagine, if at every turn, when someone who was in a position of power became aware of the abuse and chose to speak out instead of turning a blind eye. If they bravely confronted this behavior and embraced it as our collective problem whose solution required both boldness and courage, how different our world would be. You see my point? Each one of us, every day has the opportunity to be more like Rosa Parks and treat our decisions, however insignificant they may appear, as though they had the power to create immense change.
In our world we are witnessing a growing trend of intolerance, exclusion, and hate that is rapidly becoming normalized. This is so very dangerous. Sadly, I find myself guilty at times of barely taking notice when I hear on the news of another hate crime or school shooting.

We tolerate children being separated at the border from their family or violence being perpetrated toward others based solely upon their faith. We vote for a president who admittedly “grabs them by the *&#@$%* and repeatedly uses his position of power to bully and humiliate those who dare disagree with him. Even today, so many years after the courageous decision of Rosa Parks and the fight for civil rights, we are still bombarded with daily video feed of more senseless and brutal police beatings of black people. Where the color of your skin and not the crime define the structure of the sentence and the punishment meted out.

So when I find myself feeling powerless in the face of the suffering I see in the world, I hold on to the hope of the Butterfly Effect. The idea that somehow, each one of the seemingly small choices I make each day to battle injustice, defy hatred and perpetuate more goodness and kindness in the world will tap into some universal benevolence, find traction and culminate in a larger than life transformative shift that has the power to not only save me, but help mend a broken world. So tomorrow, if I find myself faced with the opportunity to refuse to give up my seat on the bus- well, I am going to try and be more like Rosa Parks and remember that one small change can change everything.

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The gift of Change, well, after it really sucks.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of change over the last few months after having experienced a great deal of it in a relatively short amount of time. I wish I could tell you that I am a “throw caution to the wind” kind of person and that I welcome change with open arms, but no that is definitely not my style. My style typically involves my being forcefully evicted from my safe familiar space by something on the order of a natural disaster to get me to change. What my home has been destroyed? Guess it’s time to move on! I have often wished that were not my process and that I embraced change with far fewer temper tantrums and much more grace and equanimity. Sigh.
But here is the thing, when you grow up in an addicted home with plenty of added trauma, well let’s just say that my need for safety has been etched deep into my bones. Our burdened bodies will heroically attempt to hold our history as long as possible, but the vestiges of the past are always with us, serving as vigilant soldiers always keeping watch for any real or imagined danger and for me change often falls in this category.
Because of that, my body has the uncanny ability to let me know when change is looming. I feel it in my clenched gut and the tightness around my chest that hangs heavy like armor. And when change finally does arrive and threatens to overwhelm me, I am always tempted to stay small, play it safe, and pretend I can control my circumstances through sheer determination. But life has a way of reminding us of her unpredictability and she is not easily swayed by my feeble attempts to bend her will to my own.
So, when I have finally exhausted myself with trying to control everything, I remind myself that the tumultuous nature of change will once again give way to my ability to gently and sweetly open to the present moment. Change pushes us out of our comfort zone, edging us to the precipice of the vast unknown. Clearing away what was, in order to make room for what might be. Our culture and upbringing rarely prepare us for the inherent suckiness but absolute necessity of change in our lives. And after a lifetime of struggling and fighting against change, I have finally begun to learn how to tap into my deep well of resiliency and have even fostered some increased ability to hang out with the gut-wrenching vulnerability that seems to woven into the very fabric of change. In moments of great upheaval it can feel almost impossible to remember that change is an absolute requirement on the road to transformation.
It’s funny how during these times I often find myself revisiting memories of going to the beach each summer. Perhaps you have had this experience as well, swimming out in the ocean and knowing the sheer panic of getting pulled into the surf and feeling the raw power of the ocean, the fighting, gasping for air all while praying to be thrown to the shore so that terror will subside. But I have also had an altogether different experience of the ocean as well. Feeling at one with the wave, the almost spiritual experience of allowing myself to be moved in a synchronized dance with the currents, feeling a deep connection with the water and melting into the sheer power and absolute exhilaration of letting go and trusting that I will find myself safe back on the shoreline once again. In both instances the wave itself is unchanging, but my relationship and how I experience the wave seemed to be worlds apart. I have come to terms with the fact that I may never be the kind of person who embraces change wholeheartedly, but these days I am mostly okay with that. I will just continue to try to remind myself when deep in the chaos of change that the suckiness won’t last forever and if I can let go, even just a little, I may just find that the wave of change created something altogether unexpected, delightful and a maybe even a little bit magical. Something that had been completely out of my field of vision, and required being pulled under by a terribly strong wave, inviting me to surrender and let go, only to finally realize I have been washed up upon an entirely new shoreline. A shoreline so unexpected, so beautiful, and certainly one I could not have imagined from where I had just stood. That truly is the gift of change, it takes us to places we could never have imagined, but not until after it really sucks.