Shhhhhhh…I figured out a secret. Is it the secret? Come closer. Or not, because I like to shout.
I’m not going to change. While continually changing.
So much of me wants to keep throwing profound statements at you.
But I’m looking at a Carl Richards drawing that says: WHY.
Why do you do the things you do? Why do you want money? What do you really crave?
I crave connection like a fool: throwing myself at people and hoping I’ll stick. Sometimes I stick. Sometimes I only stick for a while. Sometimes I don’t stick at all.
It’s painful to un-peel from people, even if they seem to physically toss you over the outfield fence. Oy (Fucking) Vey.
Sometimes I don’t stick at all. Like at that recent interview where I realized mid-interview that I was not for this person. And oh, how I wanted benefits and an office and co-workers, so I tried to believe I was for this person.
I was not.
Such a cursed blessing to think how it would not have worked to be work there. But I know I’m not going to change who I am. That it takes so long to realize our worth that once we do, we better hold on tight to that worth. Maybe some people know their worth early on. Lucky!
And the changing: I am continually improving on my shiny and not-so-shiny parts. I’m a work-in-progress. That’s what I love about my job right now: I’m always learning new things from amazing experts like Rick Hanson and Rachel Simmons and from people with no initials after their name. Like my friend Natalie who reminds me to keep writing down what I want. And Carl Richards who asks me, “Why is money important to you?”
Money is important to me because we need it to live. And I live for connection. I want to hear my kids and their friends laughing in my holy house. I want to go on short trips to see beautiful places. I want to read a book with my dog nearby. I want to see my husband Chris light up when he tells me yet another fishing tale.
I want, I want, I want to be OK with never and continuously changing. Because, you know: The moment of change is the only poem (A. Rich). And I’m enough (R. Simmons) exactly as I am.
I don’t know where it came from originally, but the saying “the more things change the more they stay the same” comes to mind. Because there is constant change in our lives, magnified, intensified even by our kids sometimes it takes a massive seismic level shift to make us remember that change is constant. We change ourselves, our kids change us, society changes and changes us, and we in turn change society. Society then affects our children in ways we can not changing them in ways we can’t predict. Change sucks. It is inevitable.
I totally agree, while also loving evolution, too.