How do I know the difference?
I've had a number of conversations with people recently concerning the inevitable changes encountered in life. No, not talking about "the change" as we women tend to discuss in our own circles, though this certainly does bring us to a place of having to reevaluate life and how it works for us. And certainly, that one qualifies as a major milestone in a woman's life- so maybe I'm not really not talking about it.
When I used to work in the print industry, the pace of the job was intense to say the least. It was common to hear the phrase "running with your hair on fire" in reference to what it took to maintain the workload we project managers were expected to juggle. That company's motto, as they began to recognize how different the landscape was becoming for the print industry as the internet became the norm and digital media began to replace actual printed material, was "The only thing constant is change." I hated that slogan. What it meant to me as a project manager back in the day was nothing but an increase in the workload as we took on more and more forward thinking accounts, and began to shift the burden of the bottom line away from what was no longer reliable, to that of what this strange new way of living was demanding.
Looking back, I realize how savvy the leaders were to make those changes, despite the extra work it took to shift the balance from the old to the new. The company is still thriving today, when many of it's competitors have closed their doors. Certainly, many of the recent conversations I've had were along this same vein, the old guard clinging tightly to the old ways, the new guard demanding a seat at the table, stirring up the status quo with it's new ideas and new ways. The tension between the two.
On a personal level, I feel it, the yin and the yang. The comfortable lull of how I've always been, how I've always managed to be, yet how I am always being challenged to grow and to change. All at once inside of me is this tension between the old guard and the new.
Talking with a loved one on the phone this morning, I hear it again. Not in specific words, but in the undercurrent of fear versus curiosity. And another touch of it shows up in a Facebook post, and a question someone asks over how it is possible to learn to trust ones intuitive voice over the voice of fear. How do you suddenly stop listening to one and start listening to the other? I feel the pressure to appease each of these people with a pat answer, an immediate solution. At the heart of each question was the true question- how do I just change?
I have to admit, that what I know to be the truth, the one realest answer I have to that question is less than satisfying. How do you just change?
You don't.
See, the truth about change is, it never really looks like change, as much as it looks like total chaos; someone running down the hall with their hair on fire. There is no such thing as a true overnight success. Only in the fairy tales, is someone snatched up unwittingly out of one life and plopped down in another life completely different then they were the day before. Overnight success stories simply mean that the outside viewer wasn't privy to the work that it took behind the scenes.
Whether that work be on a personal level, with a counselor, a doctor, a support group, or on the scale of a large corporation, shifting to the new way of thinking, doing, being, requires deep intentional work that has to happen right alongside the old way of thinking, doing, being. One doesn't normally have the luxury of a chasm of nothingness in between. And to the outsider, and even to those going through it, it quite often looks and feels like complete chaos.
To some who were comfortable, this chaos seems completely without purpose and is unwelcome. The old guard will batten down the hatches, seeing this chaos as something to be weathered, stubbornly refusing to let go. At the very core of this old guard thinking, is a sort of unspoken fear. Fear of what will happen if they make way for something new. Do you know what the remedy is for being afraid?
Being curious.
Curiosity allows for what might be possible. Curiosity invites the new guard in to listen to its newfangled ideas and strange new ways. Curiosity allows that what once worked beautifully may no longer serve. Curiosity sees that there may be more then one way to get from point A to point Z. In fact, curiosity knows that it is more about the journey then it is the destination, but it also knows that the destination may be clear, while the journey is what seems so uncertain.
Curiosity takes the journey anyway.
Back to that question that woman asked on that post today - How?? How does one go from being afraid to trusting their intuition? How does one even know what intuition is? And more specifically, how do you even learn to trust it if you can't really know for sure if you're hearing it?
My answer after all this ruminating is, like any skill, you have to practice. Each day, each step of the way, you have to learn to lean in and listen hard. It works the same way in life, as it does in the studio. Yet, it is in the studio where I have made the most progress in teaching myself what it looks like to tune into the voice of curiosity and identify the voice of fear.
Curiosity vs Fear. Old Guard vs New Guard.
This is what we'll really be doing in my workshop coming up this march. Yes we are making art, and plenty of it. Students will walk away from this class with, seriously, a significant body of works on paper. But this class will be every bit as much about learning what it feels like to dig in and listen. Think of it as life training. Skill building that goes beyond paper and glue. It won't be heavy - it will be profoundly joyful. As connections are made, to the art, to each other, to the written words in our journal exercises, the one thing that I see more than anything in my classes is a stirring towards joy. Often there will be a few tears shed, as someone connects to something they hadn't recognized in the past, but it isn't the scary kind, where a professional needs to be called in to assist. It is the bountiful, beautiful, illumination of the truth of what is possible when we are finally able to identify that voice. You know the one. It tells you to -
Be curious.
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