Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We Could All Do With Some Change

I have to admit off the top that this blog post is a bit of a cop out. It's the result of a bargain I made with mysefl. Recently I recommitted myself to spending half an hour every day doing free writing - in hopes of recovering my creative self, which seems to have burrowed itself away since I returned to academia (a point to ponder further, but not now). And while I'm pluggin creativity, I urge everyone to check out www.ted.com . This talk by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my favorites: http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Anyways, so I am planning to write for less than 30 minutes and hope that I can write something worth reading in less than that time.

Well, as of late I've found myself with the time (finally) to do some reflection, thinking, writing and the such. And one theme I keep returning to is this concept of CHANGE. It permeates life in so many ways - from little changes like moving the furniture around in one's room or trying out a new menu item at your favorite restaurant, to medum sized changes like deciding to get a pet or go on a holiday to a new destination, to BIG changes like deciding to move to a new city or country, acknowledging that you are not happy in your current reality and deciding to do something about that, or deciding to give up a longtime addiction to something like nicotine, or alcohol or food.

The above examples of change are typically ones we have a decent amount of control over - ones where we can chooose to change or choose to stay the same. And most of the time, most of us choose to stay the same. We don' even realise we are making a choice, because often the possibility of a different reality doesn't even enter our consciousness. We only start to contenplate change when we desire something (either the addition of something - like a pet, or the subtraction of something - like an unhealthy habit, from our lives). Even then, when we realize we are unsatisfied with our present circumstances, we resist change as if it might very well endanger our life. Of course very rarely does change threaten one's actual life. Most often it makes us feel uncomfortable, uncertain and therefore uneasy. It's amazing how much certainty we demand in a life, without actually recognizing how much innate power we have to direct our own evolution. We think certainty equates to maintaining the status quo, but is this really serving us well? Who wants the status quo? Isn't there something intoxicating about the idea that we can change our current reality, move beyond the status quo, and evolve simply by taking Certainty by the reins and directing her towards our desires? Is the threat of being temporarily uneasy really enough to warrant the energy we exert to keep things the same? And we all do it, it's not something any of us are immune to. We put energy into unrewarding relationships,into jobs that are no longer suitable or exciting, into places and friends that we've outgrown, and into so many other aspects of life. It's amazing how much of our energy goes into the resistance of change. Imagine the possibilities if, instead of burning that energy as resistance, we harnessed it and directed it towards shaping changes that we wanted to make in our lives. I suspect we'd be amply rewarded and pleasantly surprised by the results of such an energy tranfer.

To be continued...(12 mins of writing)

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