That Which Does Not Change
Some of my past blogs have referenced a mountain bike trail that I love to run on.
There are times where I don’t feel like going and I get almost a magnetic pull from this piece of land deep in the forest. Almost like I can’t not go.
Yesterday was one of those days I did not want to go. I slept like shit the night before and I was tired and grumpy. And yet I found myself lacing up my shoes and pulling into the parking lot at the trail head.
I noticed the scenery. The tree with the big split in it. The log that has this beautiful plant growing out of the end for no particular reason. The clearing that over looks the lake.
It hit me right then. I feel so compelled to return again and again to this place because of just that: there is incredible comfort in its predictability and familiarity.
My personal life has been in upheaval lately. I feel destabilized and unmoored by so much of what has been occurring. Not to mention the pandemic that continues unabated and the racial unrest. We as a culture are untethered in unprecedented ways right now. So I am experiencing the lack of stability on both a macro and micro level.
The trail orients and guides me. I can look at a fallen tree and know EXACTLY where I am on the path. What is behind, what is to come, and how far I have to go. There is incredible grounding and anchoring available in that. And for the most part, the trail does not change. It has been consistently the same for as long as I have been going there. It begins and ends in the same place. The lake does not move. The distance from point A to B gets neither longer nor shorter. And in this time of uncertainty, I can relax and breath into that constancy.
Often, after a big or intense piece of work in my office, I will ask my client to slowly open their eyes and look around the space. To let their eyes rest on what feels safe. To notice that the unchanging quality of the room. I am in the same place. So it the window, the bookshelf and the plant. While they ( and I ) are making life changing internal shifts into unchartered waters, we are being held and supported by that which externally remains the same.
So I invite you during this time of instability to connect to that which does not change. Look around the room you are in right now. What is the same? Feel into the structure of the four walls that never move. The ceiling that provides you the same protection from the elements year after year, etc. Breathe it in and know there is incredible stability in the constant.
With So Much Love,
Candace