CHANGE
I recently bought one of those round bristly dry brushes that you’re supposed to use before a shower to slough off all your old, dead skin like a snake and then slide out afterward all brand new.
Naked in my bathroom, I dutifully set to work, not really knowing what I was doing, but doing it anyway because I knew it was going to be good for me.
This new part of my beauty regimen is an apt analogy for a new part of my larger life: After 20+ years living in NYC, I recently decided to pick up and move across the country to Los Angeles. This is after saying for years that I would never live in Los Angeles. But the desire for a massive change came over me, and suddenly LA started calling me.
“Did you move for a relationship?” people asked.
Nope, unless you mean the one with myself.
“Are you here for work?” others asked.
New opportunities maybe, but as a consultant and coach, I can work from anywhere, so, no.
In other words, I moved to LA not really knowing what I was doing, but doing it anyway…because it was going to be good for me, I think.
***
“The only constant in life is change.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard that aphorism before, but it doesn’t mean change isn’t hard - even when it’s self-inflicted.
This shift I’ve made - in geography, mindset, and in my levels of vitamin D - sent me back to two previous pieces I wrote, one in 2016 when I ironically happened to be spending a lot of time in LA with my company Uplift’s pop-up here, was in the middle of a tough breakup, and was feeling very untethered. The other one I wrote three years later, when I made the excruciating but liberating decision to shut down said company Uplift.
In both, I refer to the podcast “Seasons” by Rob Bell, in which he talks about change, and especially the time in between previous and new parts of our lives, i.e., the “liminal space.”
Why, I wondered, as I sat in the cozy chair on the beautiful, plant-filled outdoor patio I manifested in West Hollywood, do I so often seem to find myself in that terrifying, magical place?!
***
Seasons end. Change occurs, constantly, in the natural world and in our lives. We can fight it (say, by moving to southern California where there really are only about 1.5 seasons at most!), but it still happens.
I feel that I belong in LA right now, but I’m mourning the season of life that was New York for me - my twenties and thirties, with possibility waiting around every corner in the city. I mean that literally - I would walk out of my apartment at 10 a.m. on some days and find twenty unexpected adventures on the way to 10 p.m. Right now, I’m still feeling a bit between two worlds, on my way to forming a new part of my identity.
Or as I said to my therapist recently:
“I belong everywhere and nowhere. I belong to everyone and no one.”
And that, says Rob Bell, is where magic can happen.
“So, if this is you,” he says in “Seasons,” “Keep your eyes open, grieve whatever you need to grieve, and take your time, because it’s oftentimes that in that liminal space things open up in us that could only open up in us if we were in enough discomfort/if we felt the sting of unknowing. It’s uncertainty that pokes and prods us and creates all these new and interesting things in us.”
He’s likening the liminal space not to being stuck in the “in between” but to being in front of a blank canvas, which I find both comforting and exciting. I’m choosing to be here amidst all of the uncertainty of where my life is going; I can admit that I like change, and that I thrive in some amount of ambiguity.
So even though I don’t know the outcome (is there ever an outcome?), I'm building my path, brick by brick, experience by experience, city by city. Not shedding skins like a snake, but adapting to exciting new environments like a chameleon.
My CHANGE takeaways
Prepare for change
Build your resilience muscle and be okay with change (because, remember, life is change, both literally and figuratively, on the cellular level)
Take it slow
I tend to be decisive and impulsive, but have learned (okay, I am TRYING to learn) the merits of a bit of patience
When the universe gives you signs you’re on the right path, and makes it easy for you, accept them and listen
Let’s take another oft-used adage and repurpose it for our purposes: Change is inevitable, but suffering is optional
No matter what our age, station, or season, there is possibility waiting around every corner and with every change - we just have to be willing to see it, and embrace it