On Accepting Change

Changes need to be made. I haven’t written anything in years, for I feel I have been shackled by my insecurities, my lethargy, my habits that I have cocooned myself with like a web of protection. It feels completely ridiculous to realize that my potential is in a deep sleep, and I would only need to slap it in the face to awaken it. I am out of touch with the connection I have between my ideas and the ability of putting them into words. I am getting a headache just from writing this last sentence but it’s worth it. The concept of adorning my words with fancy embellishments is beyond me. Although I just realized I did it so I guess I’m not as out of touch as I feared. I stroke my facial hair as I write this, wondering what else I can put to paper. I wrote half a page before revising and adding, editing and embossing. All around me are faces with seeming purpose while mine remains an expression of blank confusion. Do they have purpose, or are they pretending to have like I do. Perhaps they believe they do, but it is the illusion of one, for how important could their current task be in relation to the grand scheme of things. They are not saving lives or creating art or bettering the world in any way whatsoever. But that is their job and they want to do it well. Am I any better?

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What the hell am I doing?” I often ask this of myself, and more often than not I wonder if the people around me are asking themselves the same thing. I usually don’t have an answer, trying to find one is too stressful. I have more important things to do, like take out the garbage and watch that cool internet video. And just like that, the moment would pass, and we would continue what we were doing before, content in its familiarity and intent on seeing it to the end since we had already started it and it would be a damn shame. To dare to answer, and to abide by it, is a fearsome thought, for it means straying away from our comfort zone and causing a whole boatload of trouble. Is it worth it?

Take for example the scenario of a telemarketing sales person. She drones on and on, day in and day out, every minute of every hour, to anyone with an ear willing to listen about how our product is the greatest thing on the planet for them right now and they would be utterly insane not to purchase it by tomorrow because of course this offer will expire by then. The sales rep takes great resolve in this, because if she doesn’t believe in what she is selling, then how will she convince the person on the other line to believe? More importantly, she needs to constantly motivate herself to keep performing this act, day in and day out, knowing that 99% of the time, all she is doing is wasting some random person’s time, as well as hers.

I always believed that man’s greatest achievement over his animal cousins was evolving into a being with the ability to think beyond his current state. We are able to, theoretically and at any point in time, stop everything that we are doing and question our actions. We can dissect any object, concept, theory, idea, belief or system into smaller parts of its former self, examine the parts as well as the dissection and come to an opinion on cause and effect. We can then continue the process, dissecting further and further, until we reach a point of absolute inevitability. I call that detaching, and the intricacies of it are enough to discuss till the ends of time, so I won’t delve too deep into it right now.

So what do we do with this evolutionary trait that we have been gifted that sets us apart from the beasts? Most of us do nothing, and are no better than mindless servants to the will of nature. We remain slaves to our circumstances, reacting to every effect as we are expected to, squandering the gift because it is too complicated and stressful to handle or even merely acknowledge. If we think long and hard about our modern lifestyle, we may realize that we are still servants to our baser emotions. We still just want to eat and sleep, laugh and cry, find a mate and feel safe in the veiled future that we have created for ourselves, knowing that the roof will still be on top of our heads tomorrow morning when we wake up warm and cosy in our bed. We take great comfort in the habits and routines we have surrounded ourselves with. All we have to do is put up with some punishment 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 365 days a year minus weekends and holidays, and we can go along our merry way of just getting by, getting drunk every weekend, watching a few funny cat videos on the internet and nobody will bother us as long as we don’t bother them. Is that what we call walking with the Gods? Is this our manifest destiny? To be nothing more than robotic zombie-like shadows of our potential selves, feeding and fuelling a societal ecosystem that we love to hate yet do nothing about.

  

Fortunately, there is hope. Sometimes, even we walking dead have moments of clarity, usually premeditated by a shattering event or life-changing moment. It could be a near-death experience, or a disease that awakens us from our veiled hubris. It could be getting fired from our job, or an opportunity presented to us on a silver platter that makes us realize our true potential. It could be meeting someone new and different, that taps into our inner-psyche and electrifies us into feeling and thinking like we never did before. Or it could be as simple as uncovering a childhood toy that we hadn’t seen in 20 years, that invokes long-hidden memories and all the emotions that came with it. It is a true shame that a catalyst is usually needed for these beautiful moments to take place. To be able to switch it on and off at will would be a wondrous thing indeed, although I admit it can be very tiring to exist in this enlightened state permanently. We would quickly fizzle out, our conscious brain only able to take so much before it says “screw it! I give up”. But what about being able to activate this ‘mode’, this state of alertness without needing a cue from some random element that we interpret as meaningful for some reason or another. Can we do that?

Perhaps it is a simple matter of conditioning; the practices of training our minds through repetitive actions (ironically), to break away from the sleep state whenever it hits us. It is somewhat like the conditioning of obtaining lucidity in dreams (the state where you have complete control over your dreams). One technique that is used there is to make it a habit to ask yourself throughout the day, “am I dreaming right now?” followed by a conscious acknowledgement that you are not.  Ask enough times and soon enough this repetition will incorporate itself into your dreams, at which point...lucidity achievement unlocked! Ok it’s not that simple, but it’s a step in the right direction. A similar process can be used for our purposes here. To consciously be aware throughout your day that ‘things are not what they seem’, so to speak. I find usually that means stopping everything I am doing, looking somewhere else at a specific object or person, and breaking apart this new scene to its smallest parts, i.e., the forces in motion that are precipitating the causes and effects of that object’s or person’s current state. Understanding those forces, why they exist and what they are doing, leaves me with a sense of power over that scene. In other words, now that I know it for what it truly is, I have absolute power and control over its existence. It no longer has a hold over me in any way. This is the point where I accept the fact that certain things the world has been conditioning us to believe that are vital to our well being, are in fact, not.

The telemarketing rep can stop talking on the phone, realize that all she is doing is repeating the same pitch over and over again to people on the other side of the planet that over the course of the telephone conversation have developed a deep loathing for her, and decide that she doesn’t want to do this anymore. When she dissects her reasoning behind why she is doing this, she will realize the futility of it all and decide to do something more to her liking, like eat an ice-cream or walk barefoot on grass. There is no way anyone in this universe can convince her that they would rather be yammering on and on into a sweaty handset to some unknown irate individual that this product would be great for him or her right now, than licking a deliciously cool ice lolly on a hot summers day. She will tell herself, the reward achieved when actually making a sale is not real. The most significant result is perhaps a feeling of self-worth, some kind of achievement of belonging, but in reality it is superficial and temporary at best. All she has done is created monetary value for her company, of which she will be rewarded with the same, effectively helping the chain of links continue in this never ending pointless cycle that we have created for ourselves in a corporate world of dependencies.

Unfortunately we are forced upon a path since childhood where phrases and ideologies like “just be yourself” and “staying true to your beliefs” thrive and are considered virtues to be enforced if you are to be accepted in society and amongst peers. What one fails to realize is that we are dynamic beings, flowing through the winding highway of life surrounded by branching paths, choices, and principles that are always transforming and warping into new forms. So why should we stay stagnant? Shouldn’t we transform and reshape ourselves too, to adapt to this ever-changing world? If you wake up one day and decide you no longer believe in something, then you should be able to stop believing in it without pressure from the outside world chaining you back. Why resist when the only person you are really hurting is yourself? If you impulsively decide that crunching numbers on a calculator no longer makes you happy, (if it ever did somehow), and would rather follow your dream of opening a convenience store, then by all that is of any worth in this world ,you must do so, and do so with all your heart poured into it.

Awareness is an enlightened lucidity afforded to the few who have managed to shake themselves out of this deep sleep that we put ourselves into. More importantly, we need to somehow keep this state of awakening alive and keep the slumbering beast at bay. How do we do that? The answer, at least for me, is accepting change. Repetition and routine are the beasts’ tools of destruction. Through them it aims to cage us with compliance and hypnotise us with the conformity that it needs to stay alive. Although the practice of creating habits is part of our nature as well, we have somehow warped it into our new civilised world in such a way that it now dominates us and whips us into submission. The only way is to break free from our traditions and accept that change is a stronger and more fulfilling path to follow than placidity. We cannot resist it when it comes knocking on our doorstep, but instead must embrace it and accept it for all its inevitability.

Freeing oneself from the shackles of conformity is akin to taking a breath of fresh air after being cooped up in a virtual prison of darkness for what felt like an eternity. The world suddenly opens up with endless possibilities, because the limits of physical and mental boundaries will no longer hold us down. Things we once thought were important become meaningless and inconsequential in the grand design that we can now draw for ourselves. Things that were never given a second glance suddenly become the centre of the universe, and you absorb all that they offer you like a black hole feeding off the essence of the universe. It is singularly the greatest feeling one can attain, because you transcend beyond your worries, your anxieties, and your fears. We as human beings are constantly in search of purpose, of finding reasons to do what we do. The answer has always been under our noses, yet most of us choose to ignore it.

With true purpose I write again, the first time in many, many years. A serene sense of accomplishment washes over me as I finish off this first piece, content that my fear of having lost the ability to put pen to paper was irrational and insubstantial. I tell myself now; I am still able to voice my thoughts into substance and share my theories with those who would care to listen. It was always there, merely asleep in a dark crevice of my soul, waiting for me to awaken it with fresh energy. I welcome it with open arms as an old man returning from war would welcome his faithful dog. A war I will always be fighting to the end of my days. Who wants to fight with me?