Daily Reminder # 132

"If nothing changes, nothing changes"  


My friend E asked me to remind her of this when I send her the daily reminders so I thought I'd use it for tonight's reminder. I decided to google it and see if I found any interesting thoughts and was surprised to see that it often is phrased with the "if" in the second half of the sentence. I thought this was interesting because I experience it very differently depending on where the "if" sits. In the first version, I heard it as a call to patience. It made me think that change is always in process even when we don't know it, even when we can't see it taking place. As I wrote to E - we don't see the seed growing beneath the ground until the first shoot pops out from beneath the soil, but change is happening anyway.

Of course that was me being a touch obtuse since I guess the message is supposed to be that if we keep doing the same thing over and over we get the same results. (That's what google said.)  That's sage counsel... to modify how we do what we do even in small ways if we want things to happen differently. But I do think with that, we need to remember that change sometimes needs to germinate. Women are pregnant for 9 months. Inside the womb the baby grows and evolves and matures, but it remains in the womb until it is ready for life in the world.

I think personal growth is often like that too. Sometimes we can feel so totally stuck, like we are trying and trying and nothing is taking and then one day we wake up and realize that we have just been changing so slowly that we didn't see it happening, didn't recognize the slow erosion of the rock of our past habits into new shapes. At the same time they feel like they aren't happening, these deep changes are often agonizingly painful and very frightening. New patters can feel confusing and unsafe and leave us doubting our truth, doubting our capacity to succeed.  That's the status quo trying to call us back to who we were. It's not the truth, though. Change is complex, often mysterious, often slower than we wish it to be. Sometimes it comes from unexpected quarters. We think we are opening a door for it, and it pops in through the window.  It always comes though. Always. Have faith... in life and in yourself.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• faith
• hope
• cheese
• Angel and Tara Grace
• my friend E
• my home
• Life
• beauty
• fall colors
• seasons
• change
• stability
• patience
• life's paradoxes
• friends
• blue skies
• this moment
• tomorrow

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Nothing changes, if nothing changes.

and I add this quote from Leonardo DaVinci

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do

against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases,

it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must

grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they

will then be powerless to vex your mind.