What is the most terrifying thing about change?

At the moment, three things stand out for me.

Number One – The pain experienced in letting go of something once held dear, despite the level of sentimental value attached, letting go of something known. Letting go of something I have developed a level of known predictability about, enough to have deluded myself into thinking I am in control, and that there is also some security and assurance in its staying and never leaving or changing.

Number Two – The unknown that lies on the horizon, which awaits me should I dare to continue towards whatever would be the new or untrodden path, that I now find myself suddenly walking along. I am always tempted to walk back, but I have mastered the art of burning enough bridges when it comes to changes that my soul knows I must not undo.

Number Three – And the most terrifying for me however, has to be the in-between place. The place where both the pain of loss from letting go, and anxiety about what comes next lives. It is a lonely place that cannot be explicitly shared, but I will try to assign words to this limbo, this place that is not an arrival of anywhere yet of significance, in every change journey.

Most times it feels like a lonely place. No one quite understands it, nor can anyone external to yourself fully comprehend the turmoil your spirit goes through during this period.

Those who know not of the change will speak to you as though nothing has moved, as if no shift has occurred. Whilst those in the know speak as though the transition is a thing of the past, and that you are already operating in a space of having arrived where you intended to reach when you changed direction.

Who I am during this in-between place is an erratic Being, scrambling to hold on to what I have always known , yet with a heart and soul strongly being beckoned by the unfolding possibilities waiting beyond a peak I haven’t yet reached. I resemble a schizophrenic at best in my mind palace , with the expression of my chaotic state taking on multiple personalities to the observers. Different versions of ‘I’ pop up to defend, justify, and make sense of three places that I think I am still inhabiting all at once: the past, the present, and yes, the future.

The in-between place is tricky because it is not the crossroad where the decision was made. No, it is a ways down, but not too far down where we have passed the point of no return, but at the same time still close enough where the cross road is still in sight. It is a place where, if we were to make a decision to turn back, it would be an equally challenging feat, but not yet entirely impossible. How each moment is experienced in every day of transversing through this in-between place, is critical to the story told in the next chapter. And so it goes without saying, this terrifies me the most.

I question myself over and over again, wondering if I made the right decision, and at the same time, I sense a faith in the change that I can’t quite touch yet or describe. It takes time, this stretch of the journey, and I often wish I could hurry it up and arrive already at this destination I intend to be. Every little action, emotion, and event that happens during this time is amplified in its impact and how I experience it, because my whole sense of being is on high alert.

The question of identity comes up frequently in many moments of solitude , which during this in-between place become a norm. I ask myself who I am a lot, why I exist, and what my true purpose really is. I ponder these questions, and sometimes I try to figure out the answers presenting themselves to my psyche by sharing them with sojourners who dare to lend an ear. I do this more so in the hope of clarifying them for myself, rather than it being for the sake of having any impact on the audience.

I weigh out pros and cons to each aspect of the decision made, and try to assign value to the factors surrounding it. In moments of elevation, some factors seem to be of more importance than others, whilst during the darker times everything tends to feel futile. I call upon my memory , distorted as it may be in my recollection of events, and try to use the lessons learnt from changes undertaken before.

Steve Jobs’s timeless commencement address in 2005 at Stanford University comes to mind, and in particular this statement;

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs

His words ring timeless and true for me. With every change, every crossroad encountered, when it was all happening, it never made full sense… Not really. I could understand the ‘fuzzy logic‘ I applied to each situation to allow me enough resolve mentally and emotionally to pursue the change, but there was never any hard truth or evidence about if it was the best thing to do at any given moment. It was always what felt right to do at the time; And ‘right’ here, simply refers to the choice which gave the greatest level of peace despite the discomfort, as opposed to referring to moral standing.

Looking back at all those twists and turns along the way, the dots do indeed connect intriguingly perfectly up to the point that I am standing where I am today. There are chapters I am very pleased still with their endings, the characters that I wrote out of scripts, parallel side stories I refused to intertwine with my own, and the plot twists that the Invisible hand presented which may have felt like woe at the time, but now looking back am absolutely grateful for because of the path they have veered me towards. Life and the decisions we take indeed make sense looking back in retrospect, rather than they do looking forward predictively.

Just writing that and spelling it out already has my soul calming down, and my heart racing less.

“You have to trust in something …” , Steve Jobs went on to say…”your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

Where is my trust ?

The easy approach to this question is the clarity of where it is not. My trust is not in anything external to myself in the form of people for example, and what they may or may not do, think or feel. This clarity comes from hard lessons learnt time and time again, that in a world where we try to control as much as we can, ‘other people‘ are variables we ought not to count as factors we can set as ‘controls‘ and vary at our will. At best, they are the inevitable stray data points in a plot that we must work , by conscious choice of reaction, to minimise their impact on our overall intended outcome.

But the question still stands, where is my trust placed through these changes?

Two insights come to mind.

Insight One – I trust my inner compass, my ingrained sense of knowing what is good for me, and what I am here to do and to be, which I feel is intricately linked to my proclivities; the stuff I seem to somewhat naturally gravitate towards even when there exists no pressure or force. I refuse to use the word ‘destiny‘ at present, because it preludes the notion of a grand master plan which we must search to find, and if not found, then all this ‘living‘ would be to naught. So let us leave this at there existing an inner guide we all have, an inner voice, your gut, that resonates more with some paths over others, and quite frequently, when we can connect the dots back in time we see it at play. We see the regrets which when examined , we had a sense about, we felt it in our guts that there was something off, but we chose to ignore this. We see the applauds we give to moments in our history when we listened that same intuition, and it brought us to a place we never could have articulated we wanted to be, but once there, we felt on purpose and in tune with life, and it was as though we were always meant to be there.

So yes, I trust my gut.

Insight Two – I trust the Invisible hand, the co-author to my script. Call it what you will: God, Karma, Universe, Life force…I trust THAT. Underneath the seeming madness and chaos that is nature and life at large, lies very complex, yet very real order. Being a student of the sciences, I have always marvelled at the laws that govern our world, the laws of physics. They take our experience and make sense of it ,simplifying it, demonstrating how the laws that govern this experience are universal, omnipresent, absolute and unaffected by external factors. Respecting the specified conditions under which these laws can be observed, renders them to be both true and reproducible time and time again. The Invisible hand seems to operate in a similar fashion, in tune and in line with these laws, hence the importance of the cues I give it, the conditions I set. The laws are constant.

So yes, I trust the Invisible hand.

Because it is my co-conspirator in this mystery unfolding. One of my all time favourite stories by the prolific Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, comes to mind. I think of Santiago, and his many cross roads and changes along his path. I will not retell the story for the purpose of not spoiling the element of mystery and surprise every reader must be gifted with each story encountered, but I will talk a little about what felt like his first in-between place – The Crystal merchant’s shop.

He had sold his sheep to go in search of his treasure, but after being robbed of what he needed to start the journey, he had resolved he would work to get enough money to buy his sheep back, and return to the life he had always known. He wasn’t too far from the cross road where he couldn’t see it anymore and make a U turn; as stated, going back wouldn’t be an easy ‘turnaround’, but it would still be possible. But at the same time, he could sense a future yet to be unveiled cued by the travellers that came and went through Tangier, a future that could be his should he decide to journey on.

My emotions resonate with his own: deep frustration at arriving at the in-between place, slow acceptance of being unsure of where to go next, but in the process, learning to wake up each day and take one step at a time despite being uncertain of the final destination. I am reminded to be patient with this unfolding because I have no idea how long I will be in this limbo space. What started off as a planned short duration to get enough money to buy his sheep back, turned out to be about a whole year before what came next…

I must simply trust that the dots will connect. And that the Invisible hand will nudge my own Crystal merchant to call me out on my bluff, of wanting to return to the shepherd’s life I claim to desire only at moments of peaked disappointment, and instead remind me of the pyramids waiting for me in the distance. I hope whatever lessons learnt during this space I feel discomfort being in, are the nuggets that prepare me for where I am hoping to reach, regardless of the ambiguity of the precise location.

I hope, like Santiago, to still have as intriguing a story to retell post this space I am, where fear and hope fight for residence, and faith is doing its best to keep the peace.

Perhaps, this here is indeed just my own crystal shop…I muse silently, as the fear subsides, hope endures, and faith takes hold of my now steady beating heart.

I get on then, with preparing some more tea.