You can't outrun change.

on turning towards and celebrating its poor timing, the hilarity of its inevitability, and the complexity it adds to our life.

The quiet hum of emptiness nestled between what was, and what’s coming, is unforgivingly revealing.

It’s here that we are forced into contact with the inevitability of change.

The impermanence of everything that ever was, is and will be.

A force that does not discriminate between moments we want to stretch out inside of…and the ones we need saving from.

Change robs us of them all in the end just the same.

It’s funny though that these moments of transition are always surprising us…as if the last time we endured the pain of change, of letting something go, of becoming someone new, we thought it was the last time.

But we cannot outrun our humanness.

It is normal, I think, to want to string moments together like Pandora charms on an over-adorned bracelet.

Somehow It feels better to close our eyes, hold our breath and run straight through life, arms outstretched grabbing wildly for anything we can hold onto along the way…

It feels safer to simply pretend that we are the ones in control.

That we know where we’re going…the map is in our mind and we need no sight to get there.

Which is also why when our eyes are forced open and we are made to face the uncertainty that change pins us down and waterboards us with - we experience the dull ache of deep, familiar pain.

The pain from waking up from an illusion that we had it all figured out this time.

The pain from knowing that all the moments we were busying ourselves collecting have disintegrated into the past.

The pain from mentally constructing magnanimous futures we know we will likely never live.

And the pain of having no choice but to do it all over again.

To step forward into the next chapter with a guarantee that you will once again forget the impermanence of it.

That you will inevitably get swept up into the illusion that what you have is yours to keep…and who you are is constant and controllable. 

I think though, that in place of our inability to control the events that become the contours of our lives…we were given the courage to face the pain of transition and its ability to bring us peace when we surrender to it willingly. 

We are given the choice to forge a loving relationship with change...to become an active participant in the process…rather than to simply exist as a marionette strung up and dancing to the wills and whims of time unfolding. 

And so eventually, somewhere deep within the fragility of the in-between, in the existential lull between who you were and who you’re becoming, our humanness ceases to be something we fearfully try to control and becomes instead something we want to slow down, inhale, and witness.

Something to be fully present with.

The paradox of which is that in doing so…we are also choosing to accept things as they are without needing them to be different.

We are turning towards change and celebrating its poor timing, the hilarity of its inevitability, and the complexity it adds to our life. 

But if you really think about it, life is basically a series of these transitions all strung together into one continuous flow of moments beginning and ending and beginning again…

…and we are nothing more than a cluster of cells endlessly turning over to reinvent billions of versions of ourselves over the course of our lifetime.

And so, I think, that by really seeing the impermanence of every moment, despite the pain that might bring up, we are able to soften our grip a little…

…we can start to depend on change…instead of fearing it and attempting to somehow fool it, evade it, and push it further off into some ideal future where we imagine ourselves being more prepared…more ready. 

Recently I’ve been playing with welcoming the annoying buzz of change I feel throughout my body - like a fluorescent lightbulb in a deafeningly quiet room…

…I’ve been sitting patiently with my compulsion to mentally manipulate my experience, fighting against my desire to close my eyes, hold my breath and sprint forward once again into the illusion where nothing can hurt me because nothing can catch me.

Every day, as often as I remember to, I save myself from getting swallowed up by the Siren song of distraction…and I choose instead to engage with the transition I’m in…to be an active participant in the process of it.

Every day I choose to feel it.

It’s hard, I’ve noticed, for me to not get annoyed with change…to not resent when things can’t just stay the same when I’ve only just landed somewhere “good”, or go back to how they were when I felt peace…comfort…joy.

It’s much easier to stay numb to it…to plug my ears and pretend it’s not breaking down my front door.

But in the end, it's up to me to soften. To stop squirming away from its hot breath against my skin and realize that it’s my own exhale I’m being enveloped in. 

I see now that I was always creating my own struggle against change just as I have always held the power to create my own peace within it. 

And in a world where we don’t have to look far to find suffering…I think I’d like to choose an inner experience of peace more often. I think I’d like to transform the black sticky tar that ‘change’ once embodied, into a salve of warm honey dripping through me.

I think I’d like to land in emptiness, between what was and what’s coming, without rushing through it or wishing it away.

I think I’d like to know myself here. 

To love myself here. 

And connect to the impermanence of me here…welcoming whoever it is I’m becoming before I even meet her.