Change

Living in Baja, it’s easy to forget just how brutal the winter can be on one’s emotions. I recently read a New York Times review of “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” in which the author describes “wintering” as “a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress or cast into the role of an outsider...However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful.”

The space in between, Neither in nor out, Not one thing or the other, The one left out?

As discussed in yesterday’s post, one of the most valuable modern skills we can learn is how to master transitions in a world that is constantly changing. It’s not something that we learned in high school or college. It’s not something that your company formally teaches you.

Change is situational. Transition is psychological. If all you have to show from the trainwreck we refer to as 2020 is a desire for change, you may not be turning this past year’s crises into an opportunity. You can change a spouse, a boss, a friend, but - if you carry your baggage with you - you may find that you’re living “Groundhog Day” as your next spouse, boss, or friend just triggers you in all the same ways.

A caterpillar consumes. A chrysalis transforms. A butterfly pollinates.

Do not expect cocooning To be easy. It is not a time of rest But of rebirth. They used to think That the Caterpillar

In college, I had back to back “Hell Weeks,” one as a freshman on the national champion water polo team and one as a pledge in my fraternity. A week felt like a year. Well, this year felt like a decade.

The days bleed into each other. I wake up later than usual. It’s nice to get more than 7 hours of sleep every night. I go for a run. I go to work. Mostly, I’m the only one there. When I get back home, I take a shower, meditate and do stretches.

Last year, after a routine mammogram, it was discovered that cancer cells were abnormally accumulating in one of my breasts. Cancer cells are in all of us, and throughout our body. When they cluster, but do not spread, it is pre-cancer. When they spread, it is cancer.

On our final day of our 7-day MEA workshops, we offer two journaling exercises, one of them called “The Box of Unlived Life.” This exercise may be relevant to those of you who are moving into the last act of your play but feel somehow incomplete. Here’s how it goes: