Shifting Sands

An email discussion with a friend, started up about what was going on in our lives. She wrote, "The sands are shifting." I'm visual, so immediately the image of desert sands and dunes popped into mind. Winds and breezes blew the grains around which continually altered the topography. As this image played on, I saw that the only object in that dynamic vista not moving was me.

The reality, of course, is that I was moving. Inside my body, the functions that went on without my conscious effort to think about them were too numerous to fathom. All of that activity happened as I stood on a planet that rotates on its axis, orbits our sun, and resides in a spinning galaxy in an expanding universe. Nothing is ever not moving, not shifting, not changing.

We have an impressive ability to consciously note moments and store them in short-term and long-term memory. This can have the effect of time standing still. We like to imagine that things stay the same or can, which means we're artful at self-deception. We become like the lyrics of that song that caused me to laugh out loud the first time I heard it, "You can call me Cleopatra, 'cause I'm the queen (or king) of denial."

Our dilemma is not that things change, it's that we resist acceptance of this fact. Resistance is our number one struggle as humans. I once had the thought, "I'm so confused." The next thought was, "There's no such thing as confusion, only resistence to doing what must be done." We shouldn't be so judgmental about resistence, though. Think of exercise. When we work with resistence, we build muscle. We strengthen ourselves. We can use resistence or we can, well, resist it.

We come up with the most amazing things to resist. A person exploring a spiritual path may believe he has to resist being in a body. A person who hates her job or where she works may resist exploring if that situation can be made better or if she needs to move on. We may even resist opening ourselves to love. If you think about it, there are things we should resist and others we shouldn't.

A way to move through resistence is to ask, What can I do to make this work for me? Some circumstances are such that you can turn this into sort of a game with yourself. Others are serious enough that your best mode is to look for what you can appreciate in the situation. Did you find extraordinary inner courage or compassion? What can you learn about yourself? How can you grow or evolve in the direction you choose?

Perhaps the next time you find yourself amidst shifting sands, feet firmly planted in resistence, you'll gently notice where you are and decide to consciously participate in the shift. You've seen the bumper sticker: Shift happens. As Gilbert Keith Chesterton said, "An adventure is only an inconvenience, rightly considered." Better to be the flowing river than the stagnant pond.