Seeds of Change: Enlightenment & The Scorpions

Writing this week's post felt like I was running the gauntlet. What could I possibly have to say about "Seeds" that hasn't already been said a thousand times by a thousand people? I vacillated between writing about poppy seeds stuck in my teeth and a kumbaya post about the joys of gardening. 

Who the hell came up with this theme? 

It must have been Monica, dammit.  

What the hell was she thinking?  

 The truth is, it was probably me. I thought of this month's theme. I must've been in one of my artsy-fartsy moods when poetic sentiment oozes out of my pores. 

Seeds of Change

I've been thinking a lot about change. I've written before about aging and loss. Unwanted changes are galloping across my body and face at breakneck speed, while the changes I desire move so slowly that progress mimics stagnation. The other day, I was listening to a podcast, and the speaker said that impactful change happens in the periphery. My mind instantly flashed to a personal trainer I once had who insisted that small, consistent snippets of effort led to big changes. I think about this often on my 15-mile hikes.

When I used to subscribe to fitness magazines, one of my favorite features were the weight loss stories. I was inspired by the before and after pictures of the successful dieters. I read their stories the way a horny teenager devours a trashy romance novel. The thing is, those stories never highlighted the periphery. The glossy and svelte dieters never said, "Sometimes things do taste better than thin, Florine," or "There were days I still ate ice cream out of the carton, but I forgave myself and carried on."

I remembered my best friend insisting we knock out a 15-minute power walk because "even doing a little is better than doing nothing." It was one of those moments when I realized that my big-picture, all-or-nothing thinking was not serving me well. 

The way I view change is akin to how my students struggle to write about a "seed idea." I teach kid writers to zero in on a small moment for their personal narratives and

memoirs. The problem is, instead of writing about the five minutes of hell they spent on the Millennium Force at the theme park, they choose to write about the full eight hours they spent running from attraction to attraction:

And then I had a funnel cake with honey on it. Next I went on the Tilt-a-Whirl, and that's when I threw up. My best friend got mad at me because it got all over her. And then we stood in line for...

I approach change with big, but inconsistent effort. I think most of us do. 

"A seed is small but rich with possibility, like love, which is as humble as it is powerful." 

-Pir Zia Inayat-Khan in Sacred Seed

When we view change from the outside, it usually appears dramatic and sudden. The other day, I shuffled one of my Spotify playlists, and it landed on the Scorpions' "Wind of Change." I was instantly transported back to 1990 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The memory of the news footage flashed in my mind like a silent movie. The Scorpions released the song two months after the wall came down. 

Take me (take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (a glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow dream away (dream away)
In the wind of change (the wind of change)

In 1990, I was two years into my college career. With the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification of Germany and my early 20s zeal and naivete, I felt like the world was rich with possibility. The world was dramatically changing, and I reveled in it. 

Flash forward 33 years, and I am definitely older and a bit wiser about the ways of the world. I am cautiously optimistic. When I think about the dramatic changes I've witnessed in my lifetime, I know there were things happening on the periphery that caused them to occur, micro-step by micro-step.

A Change Agent

Early on in my career, my administrators labeled me as a change agent, a "sparkplug for innovation." I thrived in workplaces that valued creativity. But as a divergent thinker, I learned quickly that I stressed out colleagues with my outside-the-box ideas and solutions. I sat across the table from people who consistently told me: 

That will never work.

You're working harder not smarter.

You're intimidating. 

Even when I had proof that my ideas were effective, I was silenced. Change is often threatening and scary. When you are the person who's given The Change Agent moniker, you become threatening and scary to those around you. Nevertheless, I persisted with my creative big-picture thinking. 

With my champion-of-change status, one might think that transitions happen easily for me. They don't. I'm a teacher. In education, it's not unusual for teachers to stay in one grade level, at one school, and in one school district their entire careers. Movement is usually minimal, but I have changed grade levels, positions, or buildings every 5-9 years. And while that might appear wildly brave and cavalier, my moves were always precipitated by unhappiness or boredom. In order for me to make a change, my misery must reach epic and intolerable proportions. 

Why does the majority of change seem to be reactive, and how would life adjust if more of it were proactive?

The Energizer Bunny 

I am an endurance athlete of suffering. I keep going and going and going. I tolerate unhealthy relationships and work environments longer than I should. I'm the Energizer Bunny packing an Ultimate Lithium battery. In education, we talk a lot about being reactive versus proactive. For me, and I suspect for others, change is almost always reactive. 

For much of my 20s, 30s, and early 40s, I was a patient Pollyanna:

Things will get better if I stick it out. 

This was just a rough year; next year will be better. 

He didn't mean what he said, he was just tired from work. 

Any changes I made in my relationships, lifestyle or job were reactive and driven by external pressures, usually negative. I only switched gears in life when it became too uncomfortable to stick with the status quo.

If You Always Do What You've Always Done, You Always Get What You've Always Gotten

Along the way, my relationship with change began to... well, change. As I lost my dewy-eyed world view, I turned inward. I think this happens to us all on some level. 

Midlife has its way with all of us. We become more reflective. We experience the existential crises of losing our parents. We suddenly come up for air after being submerged in the deep waters of our careers. We look for the horizon, see only an endless expanse of water, and ask ourselves, "Is this all there is?" If we're lucky, our reactive change-making becomes more proactive, albeit born from an increasing awareness that time and possibility are not boundless.

We become purposeful. We take stock of where we've been and how far we've come, and we think about what's ahead of us. 

I've always had a journaling habit. A new blank book (no lines, please) is pregnant with potential. I write like a squirrel that leaps between nooks and crannies hiding its seeds and nuts. I stash my life anecdotes in the multiple journals I have going at the same time. The cool thing about journaling is the looking back. 

I found a journal I had written in ten years ago. Reading over where I was in life back then, I didn't recognize myself on the pages. I was reminded of problems that felt overwhelming at the time...problems that I had entirely forgotten about in my present-day life. 

Since I was on a roll, I dusted off the video of my wedding reception. There I was in all my bridal glory being led onto the dance floor by my former husband. I paused the video to study my 24-year-old face. I was so young. I looked bewildered and stunned. My mouth smiled widely, but my eyes didn't. It was as if I was watching the wedding video of a stranger. When I think back to who I was back then, I'm not the same woman. The seeds of change sprouted. Growth occurred. Thank God.

 Proactivity (shit) Happens

I think we move through life unconsciously. We have moments of clarity, but we lapse back. I think of mindfulness on a continuum, we slide along in various stages of oblivion or enlightenment. That's a problem for

proactive change, because it demands awareness. For me, it took a catalyst to snap me into consciousness. I've written about my mom's death many times. That's because it catapulted me toward proactive change. My mom and I loved each other dearly, but we struggled to connect. We irritated each other constantly, but we were lucky enough to heal our wounded relationship before her Alzheimer's diagnosis. 

She had been a teacher, too. I grew up listening to "I'll do that when I retire." When she finally retired, she never got the chance to do those things. She was the third generation in her family to suffer with Alzheimer's Disease or dementia. Her disease and death lit a fire under my ass, because I realized that time is limited. It's a sneaky bastard that creeps up on us and robs us blind. 

So what does proactive change look like? Every day, I go to work in my classroom. I plan lessons, grade essays, and analyze testing data, but I pay attention to the things in my peripheral vision-my passions. Every week, I ask myself, "What do you want?" And when I figure it out, I turn my energy toward that. I make the necessary changes to get to that "thing." In order to do that, I had to change my life view. Teaching is an all-encompassing career. It can suck the life blood out of you, if you allow it. I stopped thinking of myself as a teacher. That's only one part of who I am. I teach so I can pursue my passions. It pays the bills and enables me to do more of what I love. 

I'm a writer, a poet, a blogger, a curriculum-creator, an artist, a photographer, a pet-lover, an endurance hiker, a naturalist, a foodie, an activist, a loyal friend, and a caring daughter. As soon as I began to bring my full identity into focus, my world began to shift. 

The question sounds slightly silly and insignificant. It's my periphery question. 

What do you want?

Change isn't easy. I still struggle with it. But you know what? Since I've started asking the question, I've got seeds sprouting all over the place. 

Want to read more from Tracy? Check out more posts by clicking HERE.