The Urge For Change . . .

"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again." Abraham H Maslow

There are certain times in life where things bubble up from that deep unconscious wellspring within us, feelings, urges, impulses for change. These are not usually logical well thought out rational plans, they are creatures of the heart, of the soul. Instinctive and primal they demand we heed their call. They belong to the right brain and the left brain can not always fathom their origins but the body, the emotions feel the call.

It is as though some internal timer has ticked itself around a dial until suddenly there is a ringing, alerting us to action. We may try to stifle these moments, bury them and sometimes our bodies will react, showing symptoms, reminding us of the things our conscious mind is preventing us from acknowledging and taking action on.

I believe that these are times when we should decide to reinvent ourselves, to mould our life, our activities, our surroundings into a more accurate representation of who we have evolved into on an internal level. We update our wardrobes, our cars, our home decoration. . . sometimes we need to do this with our lives.

"Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. " - George Shinn

We all have comfort zones, we feel at home in our reality and change can be a frightening place, especially if we are unsure what the change should be. But if we are honouring our inner impulses, our inner guidance, soul connection, call it what you will. Then we trust that if we are willing to take a risk and are prepared to move forward when the inspiration/ knowing arises, then we will lead ourselves to a new expression of ourselves. We will be a willing participant in our internal evolution.

Sometimes our old skin gets too tight and we have to shed it, at first we may feel vulnerable and exposed without our old casing. That is when we have to have faith in our inner promptings, and trust that soon we will emerge into the next phase of our lives - feeling brave and alive with tremendous energy running through our veins.

Until then . . .

I am an empty cup,

a shallow bowl,

a deep hollow in an ancient rock.

I am an unused envelope,

a blank page,

a primed canvas.

I am a rain barrel,

a vacant house.

a cavernous sea cave when the tide is out.

I am the space created by nothing,

I am expectation,

I am waiting to be filled.

Words and digital image - Susannah Bec
More of my poems can be found at Out of My Ocean

After every storm, there comes clear open skies...

"Turn away from what has gone,
for the future lies sparkling and awaiting your presence."

"All the advice you give to others is for you to hear." - Byron Katie

Today, I turned on the computer and checked the date, and then the realisation hit me that there were only nine days left of me being 'forty something'. In just nine days time I will be 50 !

Wow, I thought, I will have lived for half a century. I will be the age that in my youth I considered old. . . and then something strange struck me, far from being unsettled by it, I was actually really glad!

I have a confession to make. In hindsight, I haven't really enjoyed most of my forties. Somewhere along the way I seemed to have got stuck and have lived most of it in a kind of suspended animation.

"To play it safe is not to play." - Robert Altman

I felt awkward in conversations where everyone agreed that life became so much better with age, that they were SO glad to be older, it gave them freedom, self knowledge and happiness.

I just smiled politely and sat quietly with my secret.
I had self knowledge in bucket loads, freedom too, and have always felt such gratitude that I have the ability to extract joy from the simple things of life. But, somewhere inside me, it felt as though something had stopped, and it cast such a huge shadow.

"The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life,
the clearer we should see through it. " - Jean Paul Sartre

Then I discovered something, that sometimes just the passing of time solves things. As some things decay and are dropped, other things ripen in their place. And lately I feel a real shift, a bubbling sense of new life. Whatever had stopped has started again!

Something has been transformed, inner alchemy has been at work.

So, without ever entirely understanding what caused and cured these rumblings in my inner life! I shall gleefully let go of what has gone and with open hands I will welcome the future. I will embrace this new phase and I shall begin again!

I will step willingly into my fifties. I am ready for a new adventure!

"After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn.
And after every storm, there comes clear, open skies." - Samuel Rutherford

Have you ever felt such a turning point? Have you had inner situations that could be felt but not understood?

Image: between today and tomorrow - Susannah Bec.