Shifting Winds
Familiar patterns, habits, and routines are essential to have. As important as they are, they also create a plan that interferes with dealing with change. Change is going into the unknown, like an adventure. Adventures are fun, but also can have unforeseen fears and anxiety. That fear can be paralyzing, and cause people to be stuck or a standstill. As a human, I think it’s fair to say none of us want to be blocked. As a dancer, I can not stand still; I have to move like the wind.
The wind is moving air. Wind can be mighty, shape our land, provide energy, and destroy our structures. From a calm breeze to a storm or hurricane, the air is malleable and flows with changes.
As winds become more robust, it carries and moves on. You cannot hold it or control it. The difference in how we accept the wind or fight the wind is something we choose similar to receiving change.
You do not like the wind because it is different. When something uncontrollable, like the wind blows, we can fight changes, but in the end, the breeze will continue.
Normal is changing now. Work environments, health concerns, social injustices, and global awareness. The push back from some is the fear of the change. Because the world is fighting the same enemy of a pandemic crisis, there is more empathy for human life. As compassion is more abundant, a storm will blow in that direction of change when social injustices happen. Lives are taken because of xenophobic beliefs; however, the wind is already in the flow of change, and empathy thrives. The fear of differences can now be challenged.
“The only way we’re going to stop these endless cycles of police violence is by creating alternatives to policing. Because even in a pandemic where black people have been disproportionately killed by the coronavirus, the police are still murdering us.” -NY Times
The fact is that the wind is the change you cannot control and will leave you behind. It is a gust that will scatter you, and blow past you with no discretion.
The wind exists, and change is regular. As the breeze is real and unstoppable, change is inevitable. It is reasonable to expect change. Fighting against the normal is irregular.
How can you become the wind and accept change?
Be Better
Develop new routines to accept small changes
Take a break
Meditation gives your mind a break.
Embrace
Learn to open arms and embrace changes over avoidance.
Research
Unknowns creates anxiety and fear, do research, and learn more.
You can not stop the flow of change once it has already gone. There is a broad consensus that 2020 is a terrible year, but I think it is the year that brought a new era of change.
