At the Precipice, We Change

By Jill MacGregor

Take all choice away. Just grind me down to a nub. Shove and elbow me right to the very edge. Force me into a corner, take away my wet paint brush and turn off the lights. Do you find that this is when and where you make your most significant changes—or is it just me?

I wish change was a glorious Oprah *aha moment* that I had over International Delights coffee each morning but it just never seems to happen that way.

Sometimes change is a bully, pushing and shoving me into a rage until I finally push back harder. People can do the most amazing things right after they’ve taken the hardest punch and suffered the most severe losses. Just when you think you’ve nothing left, you’re completely depleted and broken, you can push yourself up, harness the thing that makes you mad enough to spit and beat change down until it serves you, it obeys you. Is this extreme a necessary ingredient for us to change?

Change is hard and many times we just don’t wanna. We like puppies and bunnies and unicorns—not change. But those things don’t usually motivate us do they? Did you hear that? I just said happiness doesn’t motivate us to change. Happiness is the warm, snuggly bed that we don’t want to get out of…yet the day calls and the bully shoves.

Chaos seems to be the doorway to change. It’s the wind kicking up and the sirens going off that seems to put us in the starting position.

I hate that.

Fresh Starts. So, here we are at a new year. You can’t really make a fresh start without a little wear around your edges. An occasional dent and scratch that reminds you to try a different path this time. A scar that serves as a badge of sorts, a battle wound, maybe still tender, that makes you wiser, gives you the experience to remain calmer this time, creates a new level of certainty as you make a fresh plan, craft a new path for yourself. The recent past is your compass as you chart a course in the New Year.

Resolutions. Resolutions are all about looking forward which is a good thing but, at the end of the year, it seems just as important to take a moment and assess the goods. What did you accomplish in the last year? What slipped through your fingers? What did you not get to as fast as you’d wished? Looking behind you can be just as important as looking forward at moments like these. So, take a look in your basket—all full of scraps of joy and pain and hope. Pick through the pieces of almost and next year that are stuck to the back of every hope and dream that weights your basket—and look, my friend, at all the accomplishments in there. Really acknowledge them, big and small. Maybe your accomplishments met up with your expectations, maybe they didn’t – but they are still accomplishments.

This could be a more apropos time to take a breather, a temporal sorbet, that cleanses you from the past. Do you feel a dull hollow resonating in you from a previous disappointment? Set it down and leave it here. Allow yourself to move forward refreshed. You’ll move faster without itsr extra weight — there are so many important things to get to that will be far more important to you than this old disappointment.

Reminders. I was reminded of a lot of things this year. Some of these reminders looked like they came in neat little packages until I unwrapped them. Deceptive. Sometimes the seemingly simplest things that happen in our lives can carry the greatest weight. Here are some of the reminders I received this year.

My wish for you. I wish you bounty as we enter the New Year. Bounty in every guise—love you feel you may not deserve, success that comes at you like a raging locomotive, fulfillment that wraps its arms around you and makes you purr like a cat, the cup that runneth over repeatedly, the forgiveness that comes unexpectedly, the understanding that allows you to be just who you are, the peace that allows you to move through difficult moments unmarred, the strength that you didn’t think you had at the exact moments you need it and the ability to give all the kindness your heart wishes it would receive.

Here’s to your wonderful 2010.