When a Cycle Breaker Hears

"People Don't Change" -

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I get really cranky when people off the cuff declare that - “people don’t change.”

I think - yeah, some people don’t.

But many people do -

And for some of us, it is our life’s work.

Now, it’s usually true that people don’t change until they get completely fed up with their own bullshit.

We have to endeavor to do the work to change, and often that’s not easy -

Especially where healing and generational trauma and patterns are there -

However, it is possible.

Any cycle breaker will take you - we change.

We often feel that we have to -

We have to make it a conscious effort to live their lives differently from every way was taught to them by our parents, and probably was bequeathed down from many different generations before them.

Any person in active remission, in recovery, from addiction will tell you - we change.

We take it one day at a time and do the work and do not rest on our laurels -

But in doing so, as we say, ‘our whole attitude and outlook upon life’ changes. We are awakened, spiritually, -

That has been one of the most profound changes in my life.

Now, I get that many people don’t want to do the work.

Many people fall back on old patterns - whether they are addicts or alcoholics or not -

But -

This flippant dismissal of absolute universalism that people don’t change makes me wrinkle my teeth and I have to stop myself from bearing my teeth -

I wouldn’t fucking be here if I didn’t change.

For so many reasons - so many times over.

But when people say that, I kinda want to retort -

Well, that’s a sorry ass way of seeing the world -

Why don’t you meet some new people? Read some new books? Have your worldview expanded a bit - or endeavor to change yourself so that you can believe that -

Why, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

And change - the constant of life -

Can also be a gift bestowed upon people as well -

To grow, to evolve, to transform.

It’s not for the faint-hearted.

But the healing that comes from change - it’s thunder-striking, lion-roaring powerful.

I believe in this so strongly, and it’s a testament to my growth -

As a child, I hated change.

I absolutely loathed it.

In my favorite childhood movie, Anne of Green Gables, Anne Shirley gets it.

She hates change too.

For those of us with tumultuous backgrounds and dysfunctional families, we cling to things they way they are - so fearful of impending changes.

As a kid, I hated moving up grades, leaving teachers, and I feared the unknown and change.

I think many adults and friends my own age couldn’t understand my resistance. It could be the subject of ridicule.

But my resistance was strong - I even remember my mother saying she could hold me back if I wanted, because I was so hesitant to move up.

That got me though - I didn’t want that - to be limited and seen as having failed.

Now, as an adult, I realize it was deeply rooted in a desperate desire for stability and calm from the chaos of my childhood growing up.

Though it could get better, I always knew it could get worse -

My anxiety took roots at a very young age and was desperate to - at least keep things as they are right now, and a silent cry of—

“Please just don’t allow them to get any worse.”

And yet, I am also a bowl of contradictions - because my whole life has been built on change.

If it hadn’t, I certainly would never have left little Panama, NY. I wouldn’t have gone to college, or married, or onto university—twice.

I wouldn’t have moved around as much as I have.

I certainly wouldn’t have moved across the world to a new culture and learned a new language. And for five years.

It wasn’t always easy and, looking back, I resisted, on the precipice of change, much like the little girl inside me would have.

But - there was also a part of me, deep down, that knew that if I want to evolve, I need to do the change, even though it causes me fear and worry and anxiety and stress and unhappiness, albeit temporarily.

Because the real kicker is this -

The greatest moments of joy in my life - have also been because I made the changes.

And had I not - I would have been a completely different person.

My whole healing journey has been because of a desire to change and a willingness to embrace that.

I have lost so many people I thought I couldn’t live without - from partners to friends to family members -

And yet, here I am — surviving…

Change.

It truly is the only constant in life.

It’s the great paradox of life - it all constantly changes, and this all ends.

That’s why the hokey but true platitudes and cliches really do stand the test of time -

To fully embrace life is to embrace the changes.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time - James Taylor

—which inevitably brings all the changes.

I am also struck by the paradox that - the only way perhaps we can enjoy this life and all that it has - is to be limited, to have our days numbered.

I don’t believe we cease to exist when our bodies are gone - but that our souls, spirits, energies, and auras live on -

But I do believe that there are reasons why we are made not to never truly know what is beyond -

There is an element of faith, sure, but more importantly -

We look at things differently and grow to have more appreciation of that which comes to an end -

I just smiled, remembering a popular song on the radio some years back -

“Now don’t it all seem to go, that we don’t know what we got ‘til it’s gone.”

To a degree, it’s perhaps human nature an inescapable.

I am not above this - certainly.

But I do thin that when you’ve lost as many people as I have - you look at time and life’s fragility a bit more intensely.

My dear neighbor has many grandkids and great grandkids. They live not close by, several hours away, but still drivable distances. Still, she doesn’t seem them often.

She commented that when they’re together, they act so close, but then when you’re away - it’s like, she said — “out of sight and out of mind” -

And it made me so sad.

I know we’re all so busy these days. I know raising kids takes a lot of time and effort and money -

But also - life goes fast.

People won’t be around forever.

I know I sound like an old person -

But I’m just someone who has known a lot of loss really quickly -

And has had to battle my own inner demons with change, why I hate it, and why I must embrace it.

And how fleeting life is.

To live is to change.

There’s simply no other way around it.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash