Presto Chango

photo credit: pixabay.com/AdinaVoicu

Transformation.  I’ve thought about this word for so long that it’s lost meaning a bit for me.  Like when you’re reading or writing or editing something and you start to wonder if the word “and” is really spelled correctly.

Google defines transformation as “a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance” and includes words like “metamorphosis” and “spontaneous change”.  The one that resonates the most with me is in relation to mathematics/logic:  

a process by which one figure, expression, or function is converted into another that is equivalent in some important respect but is differently expressed or represented.

Bingo.  2018 was my year of nuclear explosion.  My life blew apart in every possible way.  Yet as I gain my bearings, collect my thoughts and random body parts (figuratively, not literally), I realize I am essentially the same person in some important respects, the equivalent of what I was two, three even ten years ago.  But, as the definition states, I am differently expressed and represented.  Right now, that representation looks a bit like total chaos.

To be honest, it’s been total chaos for awhile.  It just looked better on the outside.  Now, it is differently expressed and represented to the point that real transformation is possible.

Most days I am exhausted by the constant dialogue in my head.  I am working at taming those voices through meditation and stillness.  In a million years I would have never guessed that I would actually ENJOY and even crave silence and aloneness (not to be confused with loneliness).  It’s very weird and I still feel I have to explain myself to those who have never known me to need or seek or even practice being alone.   

Yes, yes.  I know I don’t truly have to explain myself to others, per se.  The person I am justifying for is me.  Aloneness.  Solitude. Taking time out.  That’s all a sign of selfishness, right?  That’s too scary.  To actually STOP and listen.  

Ah, so much transforming to be done.  To move toward caring more about the people in my life and caring less about their opinions about me.  I once read or heard someone say, “Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business.”  Golden.

Let’s face it.  The opinions that need the most transforming are the judgments I place on myself.  That ugly loud shame voice that takes over all too often.  

Silence.  Solitude. Transformation.  The still, small voice inside, the voice of grace, comes out to play, learn and lead when time and space and “doing” lessens and listening and being begin.