It’s an odd dichotomy being a
spiritual being in a physical body…
On the one hand, the animal in us
craves certain basics, common to all. We require food,
shelter… familiar things that both sustain and comfort. (We even call them
creature comforts.) As humans we equate familiar with security. At
the end of the day I want to come home to find my place the way I left it. I
want my critters safe and secure; my stuff where last I left it. Even
anticipated end of day routines bring comfort…things like unwinding with the
book I was last reading or hugging my babies all over again as I say goodnight to another day.
The soul of us, on the other hand, lives
for change. To feel alive, to experience life, the soul requires a bevy of
differentiating activities for stimulation. Unlike the comfort that familiarity
brings the body, the soul bores of routine. It abhors the mundane. You go on a vacation to remove
yourself from the familiar. Learning something new means you broke the boundaries of the old. Any spiritual awakenings or “aha” moments in life, come
in stark contrast to the routines we may’ve found ourselves living. In short,
the soul is wired to aspire …to live bigger…grow larger…to reach out and become
something beyond ourselves.
And between these dueling polarities
lies the rub.
Growth, by definition, means
change. And change, by definition, means something different than it is right
now, which means, it’s not gonna be comfortable. After all, if I stay precisely
where am I, as I am, nothing changes. And while the creature side of me takes
great comfort in that familiar little notion, the spiritual side begs for (and
even attracts) the exact opposite. So in order to assess which way we’re going
in this thing called life, we have to assess which part of us holds greater
sway? The human side-- common to all…or the spiritual/soulful part by which we individually
identify and differentiate ourselves from others?
Seems the older we get, the more
resistant we are to change…after all, change involves the unknown, and the unknown
is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar, by definition is not comfortable. It’s foreign, and
without a map, foreign turf can be frightening. Yet when something is known
(i.e. familiar to us) it’s not change. It’s quo. As in “status quo” (fyi,
“status quo” short for “status quo ante” from the Latin, translates: “the state
in which before” or “the state of affairs existing previously”)…In short, it’s
no place for growth, though it may bring temporary comfort (at least until you
get bored).
All of this to make the point that uncertainty
is a good thing, and while it may not feel so comfy at the time, I like to remind
myself in such times, that the good news is, there’s growth happening there (and in that
notion alone, I can usually find some glimmer of comfort). It may be
uncomfortable to be uncertain, but hey-- it’s not stagnation. To crave the
familiar, is to request an end to life’s growth moments, and as my garden has
taught me, if it ain’t growing, it’s dying. There are only two options. Nothing
in life stays the same. (There’s no such place as “quo”.)
As I think about life and change
and the unfamiliar feelings of the unknown and how to embrace them, I’m reminded of the lines credited
to theologian William Shedd:
A ship in the harbour is safe…
But this is not what ships
are for.
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