The enemy of enduring change is the quick and dirty fix. You move to a city to suppress sadness and instead intensify it. You quit the job to negate feelings of inadequacy and compound them by going broke. You use people like drugs to prop you up, and they use you back. You discover bitterness grows in selfishness. Frantic changes to partners, jobs, and cities are avoidance maneuvers. They imitate the rapid progress they undermine.
Fairytale solutions to psychoemotional problems cause destabilizing disruption that makes matters worse. You lose confidence. You can’t trust your instincts. You respond to the face-punch of reality by insisting on isolation and obsessive thinking. But overthinking can’t deliver the game-changing revelations it promises. At best, it’s a rehash of self-defeating melodrama. A lifetime is a wondrous thing to waste in delusion.
“The one” you are searching for is a final decision to take responsibility for yourself. Your relationship to that decision will demand you stop avenging decades-old dramas. Stop hunting down culprits to blame. The appropriate life-propelling question is, “Who is responsible here and now for turning the consequences of my existence into gold?” If the answer is not you, then your self-pitying status quo will continue to dominate your results. It will extinguish hope for a fascinating life worthy of you changing.
The heart of responsibility beats in the right action. You fund your renaissance by banking decisions that enliven rather than destroy you. You align your ethical, moral, and legal choices with your values. You know what good and evil feel like and act in the direction of good. When you want to destroy, you create. Instead of burning it down, you build. You don’t lace up your track shoes; you stay. You don’t isolate. You don’t rage. Every right action invites Creative Intelligence into your reality. It will impart the solutions that divinely rearrange your heart, mind, and body and create a new life.
Slow change, decision by decision, is the only change that lasts. It’s an odyssey spanning the Pacific in a patched row boat. It’s repetitive and cyclical. It requires a tolerance for monotony and pain. It’s about endurance. You do it in groups, never alone. You must leave extra weight at the shore. Be willing to get in the boat and wave goodbye to your old self and life for the last time. When you reach your destination, “the one” will be you and your life partner will hold your hand.
Quote:
“Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Song Accompaniment: Tracy Chapman, Change
Artwork: The Art of Seth
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Apple Music
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Spotify
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