Everything Is Changing All Around Us, All The Time
“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”
There are lots of reasons we resist change.
We're afraid of the unknown.
We fear loss of control, or the standing we've achieved in the status quo.
We're comfortable right where we are, and are often willing, at least unconsciously, to trade a great many things -- our happiness, our fulfillment, our integrity -- for comfort.
It's important to understand that there are important biological and psychological barriers to change at work beneath our consciousness.
Homeostasis is our bodies' way of maintaining a state of equilibrium; it preserves our biological balance to protect us. Homeostasis helps our bodies maintain a normal body temperature, metabolism, weight and other functions that are important for our survival. It's a kind of biological thermostat; for example, when we lose weight too quickly (as in fasting) homeostasis slows our metabolism down because our body, honed during millions of years of evolution, thinks we're starving during a time of famine. This is why it can seem so hard to change our dietary or exercise habits; our bodies are literally fighting against these changes in ways that frustrate our best intentions.
To fight through this biological resistance and create healthy change we have to recruit and retrain our brains, which also strongly favor inertia. The basal ganglia, one of the most primitive of our brain's structures, are the part of the brain that "wires" our habits and conscious decision-making. The basal ganglia can wire bad habits like nail-biting and cigarette smoking, making them very hard to change, but with enough persistence they can also wire new, good habits, like healthy eating and exercise.
But sometimes events outside of our control overwhelm our biological and psychological need for stasis.
Sometimes change can't be resisted or avoided or rationalized away.
Sometimes we're called to abandon our emotional attachment to the status quo and tilt forward, into the unknown.
I believer we're living through one of those times right now.
Many of us have been finding ourselves with a stark choice: hold onto the hope that things will go back to the way they were (to those times when a global pandemic was merely the stuff of horror movies) or embrace the possibilities and opportunities created by this unprecedented global social, political, economic and public health disruption.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
The human body replaces most of its cells every 7-10 years.
The earth is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 mph and is rotating at 1,000 mph.
Many natural processes -- the movement of glaciers, the evolution and adaptation of species, the force of erosion shaping landscapes -- move imperceptibly slowly (to the human eye) yet they're progressing, always and forever.
Change, constant and inexorable, is the natural state of things, and as a species we are only as successful as our ability to adapt to an ever-shifting world.
This ability to adapt to change is one key to our resilience. Adapting to change, consciously and courageously, helps us remember that we can survive, and maybe even thrive, whatever comes our way.
Changing our attitude, from one that dreads change and the disruptions it brings, to one that willingly embraces and maybe even courts change is resilience in action. Change is the mechanism by which we challenge ourselves, learn new things and make new connections.
This disruption we're living through feels like it has fundamentally changed the course of history. Whole industries once thought unassailable were dealt a potentially mortal blow in a few short weeks. Education is, of necessity, in the process of being reinvented. Families are fleeing densely populated urban areas for more rural communities. This is change of globally epic proportions.
There's no playbook for what we're living through, in the particular time we're living through it. The old rules are straining under the burden of having to explain how we find ourselves here and how we're going to carry on in an uncertain future. No one knows what's going to happen next, and anyone that says they do is surely trying to sell you something.
And that's where the opportunity lies. The opportunity to discover or even create a new path. The opportunity to practice resilience.
I felt a strong calling to grow a subsistence garden this year at the beginning of the pandemic in early spring, just at the start of planting season. This was at a time when everything seemed very precarious, and my immediate intuition told me to be prepared for supply chain disruptions and to strengthen my immune system as much as possible. The planting of a vegetable garden checked both of these boxes, since I could grow many of the ingredients I use to make my daily infusion of raw vegetable juice (see Dick's Food Rainbow SuperJuice recipe below).
The act of gardening -- of planting and tending to the vegetables that I would turn into the juice that would flood my body with protective vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients to alkalanize my blood, dampen inflammation and reduce oxidative stress -- brought another unexpected benefit: becoming very intimate with the cycle of nature. I was on my hands and knees in my garden nearly every day, beating back the onslaught of weeds threatening to choke the life from my fledgling plants; watching the small plants grow taller as they reached for the sun; witnessing the plants flower, the buds morph into baby vegetables, and the baby vegetables grow into my food (in my garden I grew several different types of lettuce, beets, two varieties of kale, spinach, tatsoi, cucumbers, sweet red peppers. tomatoes and I'm still waiting for the brussel sprouts).
It had been some time since I experienced this miracle of nature in such a personal and intimate way. It was a revelation, a very powerful reminder that everything is changing all around us, all the time.
So don't fear change. Expect change. Watch for change, Summon change. Lean into change.
Attune your intuition to the opportunities created by the change. And don't look back. The answers lie not behind you but in front of you.