Once my mom left my dad when I was four years-old I began living a nomadic life, and it set me on a course of a life that is always evolving and changing. In fact I’ve learned that everyone’s life is always evolving and changing, it’s just that some people dig in their heels and resist.
I went to nine different schools all across the USA before graduating high school. I admit that it was a tough lifestyle for a little boy: I learned to not get attached to anyone, I learned that the kids I was around had most likely known each other for a very long time, had “history”, and they were not likely to be fold me into their circle, I learned not to feel “at home” in any one house, and I learned very quickly to NOT ask my mom if we could stop moving because that made her very angry.
I’ll never know why she got so angry, it’s a secret she took to her grave. I will never know why we lived like that.
What I Also Learned
I also learned that life changes continuously and that fighting the change simply leads to having a rougher experience. Breathing deeply, and allowing the changes to happen made it all so much easier.
I learned to rely solely on myself as I grew up and moved around. Just because I started the school year with that teacher, didn’t mean that literally tomorrow I wouldn’t be on the road to a different town, a different, state, a different life somewhere else – so why would I trust or lean into a teacher just because I liked them? No matter where I would go, though, “I, myself” was always there, so I was the one that I could rely on.
Now as an adult I do not struggle with change, and I take chances when I see them. I have had some major changes happen along the way and because of my upbringing I was prepared to breathe deeply, buckle my seat belt, and go along for the ride. And what a gift that ability has been.
I don’t fear losing a job, or that big contract, or if I have to travel or move, because I know that I will be there. I just imagine myself standing still and the whole world is just swirling around me in slow motion. Nothing changes where I am because I am there, so there is nothing to fear.
When I see others resisting change, resisting the evolution of their lives, not taking any chances, I want so much to be able to help them see that all that resistance, all the crying, the worrying, the anger, is just time wasted – time that could be spent marveling and perhaps even enjoying the view as the natural development of their experience is going on around them.
I don’t know where I will be living tomorrow, no one does, so I’m not going to spend one moment worrying about it.