becoming better

Despair, Darlings, and a Daring New Year

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

I arrived home from a visit to my home town and found a little package from an organization called Find Your Anchor.  It was the most beautiful little package.  I am in love with it. 

This little blue box is filled with reminders of what there is to live for, and why I am a needed and loved part of the world.  It is such a generous and gracious nudge toward hope.  Each time I open it and read a little bit of wisdom or encouragement, I recall my reasons for being—for staying.

Lately, I have needed those reasons a lot. 

While away, I had a horrible but necessary, and likely healing in an eventual sense, conversation with my dad that turned into me sobbing like a child and him hugging me like—well, a dad.  Which is what was needed, because the conversation was about how I was left unprotected to be abused for years and years.  At one point he commented that I didn’t tell anyone.  And I cried out, “I was a little girl!”  That’s when the sobbing started, and the understanding came across his face for what seemed like the first time. 

I wasn’t able to say it in any other way than I was.  And I was SAYING it.  Just not with the actual words.  I was saying it with every sign and symptom of trauma that I could exhibit—and my family treated me like I was difficult, challenging, crazy, and unruly, instead of recognizing what I was trying to convey.

So, I came home to this little box, after a really emotional and draining visit.  It was a gift from the Divine of which I am still receiving benefits.  It was especially helpful a couple nights later, on the eve of the new year. 

I don’t know what it was, specifically, that was so bothersome.  I was alone.  I was broke.  I was restless.  I was emotional.  I was still processing a lot from the week before.  And I was, suddenly, despairing. 

It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, to feel the way that I did.  And that made it even worse.  Because there is nothing worse than being in the throes of a suicidally depressed mood than being there with no conscious understanding of why you are in that state.  The nonsense of it all makes it more depressing.  I got out my little box from Find Your Anchor and read some of my 52+ Reasons to Live from the card deck.  That helped a little.  I started to find an anchor.  I started to find a bit of hope.  And somewhere in the midst of that glimmer of hope, I decided that I needed to go out, and budget and responsibility be damned, I needed to have some fun. 

I got dressed up and went to my favorite bar.  I hung out with some old friends and met some new people.  We had champagne toasts and noise makers and lovely hats.  It was all very festive.  And then everyone started heading out after last call, and my despair started to set in once more.  I tried to convince some friends to keep hanging out, but they were all partied out, because they had started their fun much earlier than I had done.  So, I went to another bar where I have not had bad experiences, and have met some pretty cool people. 

I met some pretty cool people again. 

I got contact info for two women before I left, and then left with a couple and another guy to go hang out in the couple’s hotel.  This is where I move from the despair to the darlings.  Because this couple was amazing.  They were the most wise, authentic, and beautiful people.  I had such an amazing time getting to know them and hearing their stories.  And then it was late—or early—and time to go.  Or at least the other guy was leaving, so I took that as time to leave.  I’m not sure if I was intending to leave with him, or if he made it seem he wanted me to accompany him.  But I started walking the same direction as him when we left the hotel.  And then he started walking REALLY fast, and then broke into a run.  I yelled after him, “What are you doing?”  I didn’t hear him respond.  And it didn’t really matter, because  there was another guy nearby asking me if I knew where he could buy cigarettes, so I took his arm and walked him to the nearest convenience store.  After which, he walked away from me REALLY fast!  Which didn’t really matter because I was right by the bus that heads to my house and it was pulling up right then, so I got on the bus.  I missed my stop because the driver was chatting me up, so I walked back a stop and headed home and went to bed.

And then I woke up and realized I had texted my guy many times.  Probably around the time I was on the bus or walking home.  But I didn’t remember doing it. 

I had a moment when I was upset enough to send him 5 texts in a row and I didn’t remember feeling it.  I dissociated from a moment.  I thought that I was feeling fine after going out and meeting fabulous people, but those two dumb dudes being douchey had put me back into despair without me even recognizing the shift. 

Thankfully, I had someone to whom I could reach out.  And the things I said to him were oddly positive—like, thanks for not being a dick like these other people and proving that decent men exist, sorts of positive.  But it still wasn’t an ideal interaction, and dissociating is really far from good mental health in my experience.  It’s extraordinary that I can be in such a good place and such a bad place within moments of one another.  The swing of that pendulum should probably be breaking bones in my poor little body as it tries to keep up with this brain! 

I slept most of the day on the 1st.  I think that my body and mind needed to take a sabbatical of sorts.  And perhaps if I had taken that break before the events of the night before, things would have turned out differently.  But that is pure speculation.  It may not have changed a thing.  But it was much needed rest, regardless. 

The following day, my guy checked in and asked if I was alright.  We talked a bit about my mental state, but mostly we just curled up in his bed and kissed and slept and cuddled, which was beautiful.  He is a darling.  I told him that I love that he doesn’t need to run.  He laughed.  But the point was that we are really honest and communicative, and he knows I’m not ready to date someone seriously after everything I have been through this year.  We are in a casual sort of non-dating thing, and we both seem really satisfied with that.  We care about one another, for sure.  But we both need a deep connection in order to trust someone with our whole heart.  Right now we are supportive and sexual partners, and pleased with that connection.  The assumption that there is always a woman chasing you for a marriage and babies and commitment that steals all your fun is false, men.  The assumption that any partner wants to stifle and break and put you in bondage is silly—unless you are into BDSM, obviously.  A loving partner wants you to flourish and grow and become your best self.  If you are running from something, check the mirror for clues as to what you fear.  And not the rearview, but your bathroom mirror.  Look at yourself (for the really slow people in the audience). 

In hindsight, I had a great New Year’s Eve.  I met some amazing people, got myself out of a terrible funk with a bit of helpful encouragement, and had a lot of fun.  The fact that I had a moment of frustration with weird dudes and a depressed mood early in the night didn’t keep me from finding some enjoyment, spending time with friends, confiding in a person who cares about me, and getting a bunch of much needed rest.  It was a mixed bag, in some sense, but that is probably a good metaphor for the start of the year.

Because life is full of ups and downs. 

I expect this to be one of my best years ever.  I am my best self ever, and I am working toward some really great goals, so I fully anticipate great things will happen this year.  But I am also not naive, and I know that bad things sometimes happen to good people.  There will likely also be a few challenges.  The year will probably be a mixed bag.  It will have ups and downs. 

It isn’t the ups and downs that define our lives; it is how we react to those ups and downs that defines us.  Life isn’t easy, and always reacting with perfect grace isn’t possible, but we can work to do our best as often as possible, and to correct whatever mistakes we make as we go along.  And when I think about this I start to consider life in the sense of an epic tale. 

Life is something we dare to pursue. 

True life, in its best form is a daring event—a quest of epic proportion. 

There are grave moments, and there are literal mountain tops, and there are fellowships that cannot be broken, and there are resistance movements bound together by hope, and there are travels that span the globe, and there are challenges that push us to know ourselves—to find ourselves—in ways we never could if we didn’t dare to walk this road and take this journey and fight this fight. 

I walked into a strange and unknown thing on the first of the year.  There was despair, and there were darlings, and there is a daring quest set before me, which I will boldly accept, knowing that I will be a different woman on the other side. 

I don’t know who I will be 360 days from now.  But I know that she will be more aware, more passionate, more educated, more connected, and more prepared for what the next year of life might hold.   Because I am happy to walk into the unknown and to live a daring year.  No matter what it brings, it will bring me closer to my best self, and that is always good.

Payday

/ christyterese / 4 Comments

I’m busy printing out proofs to attain a payday loan.  It is a long shot, last resort sort of move on my part.  There aren’t any options left beyond a ridiculous interest rate over 50% and steep penalties should I not meet the strict requirements of repayment of that criminal amount of interest.  It should be a crime for such life crushing loans to exist.  And yet I am working to get one, and desperate to hear them approve me for this loan that I believe to be criminal.

It is nonsense, really.  But it makes all the sense when you live in the margins, where there is never enough, and you are treated with contempt and barely considered human, much less treated with the grace and kindness and compassion that humanity should garner.

These days, I don’t know what “humane” means.  I don’t know that “humanity” exists in the way it once did.  Or, more correctly, I don’t know that it exists in the way that I had imagined.

I was running very late for a doctor appointment the other day and needed to take a Lyft instead of a bus.  My driver, a Somali native, said something along the lines of “selfishness is human nature”.  I wanted to argue that was not true.  I wanted to express the compassion and love that humans were capable of offering one another.  And then I thought better of it, knowing that I was suffering needlessly an economic situation that could be eliminated with just a few dollars from the people who call me “friend”, and knowing that this man, having emigrated from Somalia, knew selfishness and pain and racism and judgment and xenophobia and messed up fucking shit that I, an already despairing woman, cannot even imagine.  Who was I to tell him that humanity has something better to offer??

Instead, I made a statement about perspective and how much we are shaped by what we experience in our lives—hoping to avoid agreement that hurting those whom we can place beneath us so that we might rise is human nature, but also not arguing that we are better than that, because I don’t feel like we are better than that very often of late.

I sit at a desk covered in images of Wonder Woman.  I built it.  I covered it in these images deliberately, because I found it inspiring.  Not only do I sit and work atop a work of art when I am well enough to do work, but I also have a deep sense of justice and love and giving of myself to improve the state of the world, and she embodies that for me, and reminds me that my end goal is a world filled with love and justice.  What I do at this desk should be focused on that goal.  And to a great extent my work is focused on that goal.

But more and more my focus is fear.  There is worry over finances.  There is stress over what I read in the news.  There is the sadness and the horror that comes from seeing the world become more broken, fractured, confused, and afraid as a particular world leader creates xenophobia, insecurity, unrest, racism, and general hatred and chaos.  There is pain and struggle and the fear that the future will become even more difficult than the present.  And that isn’t just my personal fear, but the fear of millions, which is even more heartbreaking, because of my deep empathy.  Wonder Woman and her ideals seem worlds away while I work atop images of her from generations of comics.

I wonder if Donald Trump ever watches super hero films or reads comics.  Do you suppose he sees himself as the hero or the villain?  He certainly doesn’t have the ideals of the hero, so he must be delusional if he identifies as one.

I know that I am not the hero in any story.  I sometimes get painted as one.  Ask my brother-in-law about Christmas Day in Seattle and he will tell you a tale that makes me the hero of the story.  But I am not the hero, because I only did what any human should do—I helped a woman in need.  I felt her pain, I met her in it, and I made certain that she was safe in the hands of professional medical personnel before I left to attend to my own needs.  That is the least that we should be doing for one another.  The absolute least.

There is so much more.

So. Much. More.

Recently, I had dinner with my “brother”, Adam.  We were talking about need and giving and enough and excess.  He talked about aid that he had offered our nephew, and the way that he had added a component of “paying forward” part of the funding that had been offered to him.  Give to another, the way Adam gave unto you.

It sounds a bit biblical, right?

It is a bit biblical.  Because there is a verse in the bible that is pretty much the same.  It is found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 13, verses 34 and 35.  It says, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I suppose that means if my nephew pays forward a third of his college aid, he is a disciple of my “brother”.  Haha.  There are definitely worse men to be disciples of, so this is probably a good thing.

The point I am working toward here is that the goal that we as humans are meant to be working toward—according to Jesus, and according to Adam, and according to Wonder Woman, and according to the feeling in my gut—is offering love and compassion and physical needs and grace and equality and honesty and kindness and more than enough.  And I don’t know when or where we lost sight of that, or whether we ever truly had that in our sights as a society at large.  But our heroes—the embodiments of the best of us—have always had that in view.  We need to cling to that view.

I should be focused on what I can do to continue living out the ideals of Wonder Woman, not on what I need to desperately print out to prove that I am worthy of a criminal payday loan! No human being should be forced to sell their soul so Speedy Cash out of fear that they won’t live from the 28th to the 1st, and will lose their home, contact with their family and friends, and the ability to obtain sufficient calories to sustain their body. And when some of the people are in this state while others are jumping off of fancy boats in the waves on a weekday morning, we are not loving one another as we have been loved.  We are not giving to one another as Uncle Adam gave to us.  We are being selfish.  And we are letting Somali men believe that this is just the way we are as humans—that this is just who we are and will always be: selfish bastards who trample one another to elevate ourselves.

Are you a selfish bastard who tramples others to elevate yourself?  Is that who you want to be?  Is that what you want to be known for and what you want others to believe defines the human condition?

I cannot abide that.  I cannot tolerate that.  I cannot accept that.

I won’t let humanity be a giant game of “king of the mountain” where the ruthless climber is the winner.  Not if I can do anything to help it.

And I can do something to help it.  You can also do something to help!

We can all stop accepting the idea that selfishness is a part of our DNA and refuse to let humanity be defined by anything but the heroic ideals of love and generosity and compassion and care and grace and good.  We get to define who we are, as individuals, as a society, and as representatives of the human condition.  We decide.

So, decide now.  Are you the kind of person who lets payday loans take the souls of disabled, poor women struggling to make ends meet, or are you the kind of person who changes the narrative and refuses to let this be the way that we treat the people in the margins?  Are you the kind of person who is ready to stand up and work hard to eliminate the margins?

It will be difficult work.  Change always is difficult.  You need to learn, you need to change the voices in your head, you need to assess the things that you believe and challenge the beliefs that you have held for many years.  So much of our bias is unconscious, and it takes a lot of self-reflection to work out what we think, and then to consider the ways that thinking might be incomplete, inconsiderate, or just plain wrong.  But if the choice is between doing hard work or letting down humanity, I choose hard work every single time.

Today, I still need the payday loan.  And it breaks my heart to know that I need to sacrifice in this way.  It is a terrible choice.  But there aren’t good choices in the margins very often, unfortunately.  Maybe at some point I will have better options, or there won’t be margins, and humanity will not be seen as selfish, but as loving and generous and compassionate.  Maybe on that day payday loans won’t exist—they actually will be criminal, as in illegal—and disabled women will not be afraid of starving or living under bridges because of financial challenges.  If enough of us choose care over selfishness, this will be reality.

So, choose heroic ideals instead of payday loans.  Don’t let Somalian Lyft drivers believe that this is who we are as humans.  Don’t be this as humans.

We can do better.

I know that we can do better.

Follow Jesus, or Wonder Woman, or Adam.  Choose heroism over selfishness and do better.

As I have loved you, so you should love one another.

Shifting

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

I was talking with my dad yesterday, and our conversation turned toward the topic of change.  Particularly, we were talking about what it takes to change your mind—to move toward a new idea or concept and abandon your previous thinking.  And that discussion led to some thought about how my own progression and development of thought has come about.

Admittedly, I have had experience and opportunities to gain knowledge that others have not.  That knowledge and experience have definitely been part of my transition from one school of thought to another.  But I sometimes feel that there is something more leading my shift in ideas.  And I began to consider what that might be.

At times, I think that my childhood traumas might have had an unintended consequence of pushing me toward something new.  The stark difference between what I was told and what I was experiencing motivated me to look for something that seemed more honest and authentic.  And the shame and struggle of being different and feeling tainted or marked in some way caused me to seek out a framework that didn’t make me out to be some evil, sinful thing, awaiting a horrible hell where I would burn in eternal fires.  (Mind you, I was feeling that way because of what was being done to me, not because of anything I had chosen to do.)

I bore the weight of many things, and I didn’t even remember some of the things until college.  I was always sort of unaligned and a bit mistrusting and a tad weird, but my first year of college was the start of the journey toward full-blown PTSD crazy.  Crazy isn’t a diagnosis here, but more of a title for how others began to view me.  Because symptoms of rage and nightmares and flashbacks and depression and risk-taking behaviors seem like crazy to the untrained eye—and also, it would seem, to a number of professionals. (My mistrust of rural doctors is founded upon the continued failure of rural doctors—especially those of the psychiatric persuasion.)  And when you are “acting crazy” you start to feel even more crazy, because you don’t really want to act out in those ways, but there is a compulsion within you that is far stronger than any reason you might try to hold onto. There isn’t really a way for the brain to rationalize away trauma, no matter how hard you try.  And, for some, the harder they try, the more dissociative their condition becomes—moving toward dissociative identity disorder, which is sort of the peak of dissociative brain activity.

Luckily, my symptoms hovered in the PTSD realm.  And I was also able to compartmentalize well in later years, and to push my trauma into particular and less “crazy” behaviors, like risky sex and smoking and manipulation and petty theft.  While those things weren’t great for me, they helped me keep the world blind to most of the symptoms I experienced, and kept me on a more even plane, temporarily.

But, I am getting into tangent territory.  And the point here wasn’t my struggle with the symptoms that arose from my childhood, but with change and shifting ideas.

I had symptoms that pushed me out into the world.  I moved from city to town to city to hilltop commune to city, and I experienced life in ways that many have not.  I saw poverty and abuse and homelessness and sex work and violence and mental illness and struggle of many kinds.  And I saw them up close and personal, not through huffpost articles, but on the actual street and in my real life.  You can’t live with and in those spaces without changing the way you think, because the truth of those things is forced upon you, and no amount of rationalizing or pontificating will make that truth go away.

But when you come back to “civilized” society after living off of trash can food and free clinics and using your body as capital, somehow the “civilized” people want you to stop believing in the truths that were evident in that other portion of your life and experience.  They don’t want to hear that the poor are made so by their action or inaction.  They don’t want to know that abortions happen because of careful, thoughtful consideration by intelligent and capable women.  They don’t want to believe that gay people are such from birth.  And no matter how many stories of civilized people with struggles I would tell, there were those who refused to believe what I knew to be true—that love lives in those people and in the midst of those challenges, and that they aren’t evil.

I remember the time when I was still attached to the thinking of my family and my hometown and the people within its boundaries.  I believed in the badness of sex and drugs and curse words and poverty and moral failure of many kinds.  I spoke out against abortion and thought homeless people needed to get jobs and believed that I had the right to judge others based on my superior attention to religious law.  But I was wrong.  I was very, extremely, ludicrously wrong.

I am fine with people being wrong due to their limited experience and understanding of a thing.  I was that person.  The challenge is the people who will fight to the death over their belief, which can be easily refuted with more experience and understanding.

Information is everywhere these days.  You don’t have to look long or look far to grasp a greater understanding of things.  But there are still many from my history or in particular circles who demand that their limited view is the correct view.  They believe they have the right to judge others based on their superior attention to religious law, even when I can tell them clearly and concisely how their view of the law is incorrect.  The problem, in their eyes, is the failure of my seminary training, not their understanding.  And they will continue to insist upon the truth of something that is easily disproved.

Some might think that I am the same way, because I have things that I hold to and will not deny credence or accept variance.  But the difference here is that I have researched and studied those things, and have not yet been offered an alternative proof.  I’m not closed off and refusing to accept anything.  I’m very open, or I wouldn’t be at the place I am today in my thought.

I started the shift, in some ways, when I was very young.  It didn’t make sense that god is love but god didn’t rescue me from illness and abuse.  I didn’t want to be in the place where I was suffering that illness and abuse.  I wanted to get away.  And this may have fueled my running, but it wasn’t the reason I left the ideas of my rural, religious, right-wing-esque home.  I left those ideas because they were based on false assumptions and not on the truth.  And when I use the term truth here, I don’t mean my opinions, but things that I have tested and found to be based in fact and supported by the stories and anecdotal evidences I have encountered.

As I moved farther from the religious teachings, and closer to the people living out a different life and expressing other ideas, I came to find that I loved learning.  I loved learning so much that I decided to obtain an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees.  And the more I learned, the more I discovered that those closely held ideas in my hometown were not facts.  And the more I expressed facts, instead of those closely held ideas, the more I was labeled and challenged and discounted by people in that hometown.

Yesterday, when talking with my dad, I mentioned that with every degree and every new experience, I get farther in my thinking than the previous group I shared life with.  My experience in Chicago and in study of social justice moved my thinking slightly “left” of that which I believed when I was in Phoenix and studying theology.  My experience in Phoenix and in study of theology moved my thinking slightly left of that which I believed when I was in Sioux Center and studying philosophy.  And my experience in Sioux Center and in study of philosophy moved me slightly left of that which I believed in Kansas City and Rock Rapids and Sheldon and some remote area in Oklahoma’s red hills and in studying life’s hard knocks.  So, as we dissect the course of my life, we get back to small town high school days … and the people who were in the seat next to me in high school think I am so liberal that I am going to a horrible hell where I will burn in eternal fires.

And it matters not that I can put forth an argument against a literal hell so good that I got an A+ on the paper where I did put it forth while in seminary.  That first community is still filled with people who view me as the crazy, liberal, leftist evil that belongs in hell fires.

I struggle to understand people who would deny the facts, and ignore every study, and refuse to accept any anecdotal evidence, and not listen to the stories of others, but hold fast to what has been proven untrue.

I’m not that type of person.  I love change.  I love learning.  I love knowing more and being more informed and having more ideas.  I love testing theories and researching topics and gathering data.  I love the moment when you say, “Oh”, because you have just discovered that you were wrong.  And I love the moment when you say, “Aha”, because you have just discovered that you were correct.

So, I guess the only direction that I can go as I seek the close of this post is toward encouragement.  I encourage everyone reading this to open up to an idea.  Just start with one.  You don’t need to live on the street and be an addict and get divorced and explore your own sexuality and go to seminary and study philosophy all at once.  And you don’t need to start with the idea you hold most dear.  But start with something.  Pick one topic and research it and talk to people affected and gather data and take information from a variety of sources, and see if you feel differently at the end of that process than you did at the beginning.  You can’t manage this type of study, however, if you cannot come to it with the understanding that you might be wrong.

All of the shifts in my thinking required this one thing:  the willingness to be wrong.

I had to accept that I might be wrong about what is evil and what is good.  I had to accept that I might be wrong about what causes poverty.  I had to accept that I might be wrong about racial injustice.  I had to accept that I might be wrong about personhood from conception.  I had to accept that I might be wrong about the morality and personality of sex workers.  I had to accept that I might be an addict.  I had to accept that I spent years fighting battles that I now am ashamed to have fought.  I had to accept that I don’t know much at all.  I had to accept that I don’t have all the answers.  I had to accept that my concept of the divine may have been very wrong.  I had to let myself be incorrect and let myself learn from others.

I might be a stubborn and belligerent gal, but I have never not wanted to learn.  And this openness to ideas has caused shift after shift after shift.  And those are good.  Those are well researched, touched by truth, seeking the divine, open to any outcome shifts.  They weren’t all easy shifts to make.

It wasn’t easy accepting that the creation story or the story of Jonah and the whale aren’t literal.  It wasn’t easy accepting that the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law.  It wasn’t easy to accept that a fetus is not the same as a live birth.  It wasn’t easy to accept that I have white privilege.  It wasn’t easy to accept that disability doesn’t devalue a person or their life.  It wasn’t easy to accept that gender is fluid.  But I would rather work toward accepting something with difficulty than work toward demanding a lie be accepted as truth.

And there is a chance that I am wrong about all the things I now believe.  There may be new information that comes to light, or new experience that shapes my ideas, and I may be proved wrong.

Then I will need to shift again.

In many ways change is life and life is change.  I believe that in order to live fully, I need to explore in ways that allow for change to happen.  This includes the humility of accepting the times when I get things wrong.  And I get them wrong plenty of times, but I seek to leave my ego at the door when I engage in study or conversation, so that I can keep learning from others.  And as I learn, I change.  But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

As I change and shift, I become a better person.  Contest that all you want, I won’t retract that statement.  I may not become what others wish I were—I may not fit their concept of “better”.  But I am better.  I am more knowledgeable and more open and more kind and more considerate and more accepting than I have ever been.  And one day soon, as I learn and shift and learn and shift, I will be even more so.  Not because I can shoot down other people’s ideas with fabulous amounts of sarcasm and snark, but because I can listen and learn at every moment and in every stage.

When my mother started to slip toward dementia, she went through some periods of regression.  Some of the comments she made were very racist.  But I knew that wasn’t my mom today coming out in the moment, but it was my mother in her youth, before she made the shift from the racism of her family members and the challenges of race in Chicago during her teens.  I was watching her shift in reverse, going from the loving and caring woman she became back to the girl she once was.  Those early ideas were so offensive.  And my mom was a much better person at 55 than at 15.  If I suffer the same disease she suffered, I might someday make an anti-transgendered comment, or say something about poor people needing to work harder.  But I won’t mean it.  Because I have evolved past that point.  I’ve become more open and more loving and more caring, just like my mom did.

And I have rocketed past my mom’s development, and the shifting of some others, but I also come behind those who have flown to the front of the pack, leading me into a new age of thought and action and understanding.  I love knowing that there are others pioneering, and that I am in good company as I continue to learn and to change.

Evolving, shifting, and changing should be seen as good.  None of us should be stuck in the same rut for 80 years and then die.  Not just because I see transformation as positive, but because I believe that transformation and growth are at the heart of being human.  We have one of the longest periods of development of any creature on earth.  We change slowly.  We grow slowly. We reach our pinnacle at a very late age.  And I don’t think that is accidental.  I think we were meant to keep changing in order to keep evolving into a better form.  We are designed to move forward.  We are made for shifting.

I work on creating new neural pathways and reintegrating parts of my brain all of the time.  Old humans can learn new tricks.  We are supposed to do so.  And the more we work at learning, the healthier our brains remain as we age.  Learning, which our brain needs, always begets change.  It is a natural progression.  And maybe your progression won’t lead you as far “left” as mine has led me.  But don’t be afraid to learn and don’t be afraid to change.

Evolve.  Become better.  Shift.