Change

Change
Change, like our story,
helps us to move into awareness.
Change is the air beneath the wings
that carries us to fly upward,
to experience the highest mountains
and downward
to be enriched by the deepest valleys.


The journeys we undertake through change
deepen and expand us;
the experiences we encounter
lead us to become more than we were before.
And in time, if we are mindful,
we will come to know, through the gift of change,
that all things dissipate.

My life, particularly in my younger years, has involved lots of change. My earliest memory of my birth father was walking in on him as he was shooting heroin. Based on simple mathematics of the divorce I must have been no older than 4. Around five I remember being placed in a children’s home for a number of months. I later worked out that my mother had been sent to prison for assaulting a police officer. I then remember a series of father figures.

The theme of my earliest childhood years was instability and change, punctuated by violence either around me or directly involving me. The people I grew up with and the place in which I lived should have felt safest, yet was a raging river of change.

I remember the change of being taken to my first day of primary school by my social worker.  I still cannot remember if it was because she was unable to take me to my first day of school (in prison) or unable to take me to school (incapacitated in some way). Regardless, a mother going to prison automatically brought a child to the attention of social services (and likely still does). As a single child, to a single mother, to a series of changing and broken ‘fathers’ I believe that I rarely felt as if anything was stable. In turn, how I engaged with schools, friends, and interests led to a perspective of independence and uncertainty.

In my late teens and early twenties, before I found my heart and myself, the manner in which I interpreted change shifted. Somehow I managed to avoid losing myself to the opinion that ‘life sucks’. That said the drugs and alcohol that I consumed, and the manner in which I destroyed any friendship with insecurity fluctuated depending on how deeply I believed that ‘my life sucked’.

For all that (hi)story I do recall at various points a voice within telling me that everyone, including me, is special. So marked was this voice that it in some ways brought further chaos.  I was so caught up in the symptoms of change I was unable to recognize the good for the bad in many ways.

In the briefest glimpses of lucidity there would be a peaceful assurance. I recall one such moment as a fourteen year old. At the time I was living in a children’s home, called Caldecott Community. The dormitories had just been equipped with new furniture. I was, ironically enough, the child that was constantly moved from assigned space to assigned space. At the time I was told it was because I was the most flexible. In hindsight it might have had something to do with having a sharp mind, an inflammatory attitude, and a loud mouth (the clever kid with a broken attitude can be very, very annoying to other children - that was me). The memory in question involved me looking at myself in the new mirror hung on the back of a new wooden wardrobe door and studying my eyes. I sensed a peace within me that almost seemed to conflict with the rage that would so often wage a war within me. For the briefest of moments I recall that I knew that there is something within life, and within me, that was great. But so loud was the rage in those days that rarely did I pause as I did that day.

Yet for all those memories I find it interesting that in this time I find myself committed as I am to evolving myself. I see change as an opportunity to expand, to grow. By having been so lost to the dazzling changes about me, so influenced by instability I faced throughout my childhood, I’ve witnessed myself become something profoundly more than I was before. I’ve seen the creative process in action, and the depth afforded by my expansion through change is like a river that has cut a canyon through my life; the defining question being, how have I filled that canyon - with a raging current, or a steady and certain flow of life?

And yet what would have I been without these changes? I look now at all the change I’ve experienced from a very different perspective than I did even 5 years ago. My attitudes, beliefs and values have changed.  The person I am is the sum of these changes, and yet I am so much more than the sum of my parts.

I did not learn how to procrastinate, or to wait until I am ready, because I never had an opportunity to avoid change. In my childhood change was always thrust upon me I learned how to think on my feet like any latchkey kid. As a young adult, this insecurity drove me to always strive for more than the lack I was experiencing. And as an older adult I did not settle with a partner until I found someone who truly believed in the me I sensed myself to be.

As I look at my life to date I give thanks. All the violence, instability, and choices made for me created an opening. And in that opening eroded by change I could give birth to the consciousness that I am now. I have come to a place where I have begun living the mystery of life. I have just begun to see change for what it is and I accept it. I have moved to holding change in gratitude. For in this contemplation, this experience, I have come to see change as a natural part of my life. I can celebrate the memories both before and after the change, and in such acceptance I open myself most to the knowledge and wisdom change offers.

My experiences have brought to me first-hand knowledge that there will be change in the form of people coming and going, of things gained and lost. There will be experiences of less and more than expected. And if we can see change for what it is we will see it as transcendent and sublime. The deeper the cut of change the more opportunities we are afforded to expand, to become something more than we were before. In time, and if we can come to gracefully surrender and to accept, we will find a strength that results from change. When the soul is bared and the ego tested to the point of extinction we will learn a new way to see the world, and the change that both surrounds us and inhabits us.

From a place of strength change shifts from being a survival experience of blaming others, to an experience that reminds us of asking, what do I need to know to grow? Change shifts from our seeing closing doors, to asking ourselves, are we willing to go through whatever door change may open? And the greater the change we will come to learn that in time all things dissipate. The only constants come from within, and the more we align our thinking with surrender and acceptance the greater the serenity we will experience.

The most profound changes teach us to apply life’s teachings and transform our lives. I never truly excelled at school and yet here I am expressing myself through writing in this manner, and articulating a truth in my own unique way. My greatest gift has been the transformation I’ve experienced through the change I’ve witnessed. The greatest gift I could offer myself now is to evolve from acceptance of change to jumping into change. And from a place of graceful surrender to immerse myself in change, knowing that no matter what ‘thing’ might happen that the truth of who I am is infinity in action.

The experiences I have faced, that on one hand might tempt me to pride at how far I’ve come, cause others to nod in appreciative understanding, or shudder in consideration, have served to offer me a ‘before’ to compare to this now. The net result of these experiences is that I can truly celebrate change for the reminder that in remembering the truth of who I am, and what I have already endured. The greatest thanks I could bestow upon this gift of existence is to celebrate change as a reminder that I’ve come as far as I have. Given that I’ve only just begun it’s exciting to know that change has given me the opportunity to see how far I’ve already come.

Copyright (c) 2009, Carmien Owen