transformations

surrender & renew

Blue Morpho Butterfly (Martin Johnson Heade, 1864-5)

This week, I am staying with a friend of mine. She is relatively new to my life, our friendship only about two years old. I absolutely adore being with her, around her. It amazes me how much we connect and see things similarly despite coming from very different places, having very different experiences in our lives. She is unique in a way that few people I know are; she is fully herself, and makes that uninhibited self-expression look easy, effortless, beautiful. She is opinionated in her taste, and curates her world to be a reflection of who she truly is. This is something I adore about her, that I find myself drawing inspiration from without trying to. It is as though her willingness to simply be herself inspires me to notice the places in which I am not doing that. Her unapologetic expression of who she is and what she likes becomes a portal for my own awareness about where I am holding tension where I don’t need to be, where I am assuming I need to be someone the world wants me to be, or else be misunderstood, lost, alone.

One thing I admire about her, too, is how many transformations she has been through. She has charted a path for herself lead deeply by emotion and intuition from a young age—younger than I knew one could be lead by such things. By following her intuition so early, she has developed such a fascinating array of experiences, skills, and worldviews that reflect the dimensional, dynamic nature she herself contains. For example, she speaks three languages fluently. She learned those languages by living in places she was drawn to (and leaving places she was not in resonance with), by being committed to absorbing and integrating other cultures, learning what they had to teach her, by entering these choices even if they “didn’t make sense” to others, by simply trusting herself. The result of her boldness and self-trust is that her actions caught up with her intuitions so quickly. She would go to the places she was drawn to, learn the language she needs, acquire the skill she is compelled by, without flinching at her nature as a beginner when she arrives. She is willing to transform to keep up with her desires. She has the humility to start from scratch, to learn, to not yet know. I love that about her.

This has also had me reflecting on the people that I connect with most; I notice a pattern of “frequent transformation” in the people I find the most resonance with. What I mean by that is: the people I learn the most from are willing to embark into the unknown, into the void, to start over in some way, and to find the path as they are on it. I find that those I am most drawn to seem to be least afraid of — or most willing to face the fear of — doing something new, where they are not sure how it will go, or where it will take them. Those I feel strong resonance with live boldly, they trust their inner compass, and they act on what feels alive for them in a deep and profound way. This way of being leads to a rapid rate of frequent and profound transformation, which seems to cultivate a sense of humility, courage and curiosity about others and the world.

It’s a bit of a paradox, actually, that the people who have experienced the most seem to think they know the least about the world; they are the most humble students, are always looking to understand, to ask, to inquire deeper. And those I know who have experienced the least (at least by this metric of transformations, these sort of mini ego deaths and rebirths that happen when you surrender and pass through an uncertain threshold, emerging into someone new…) have the strongest opinions, the most conviction in their sense of things, the least flexibility in how they connect to the world and others around them.

I suppose this just makes me feel more inclined to continue transforming, to continue relenting to my curiosity, to my essence, to what feels Natural and Good about where I am and what I want to do next. I want to be someone that continues pursuing the unknown now, that meets transformation with humility, by relenting to what I Think I Know About the World, by be willing to learn something new, to be reborn into a fresh and tender version of myself, raw and exposed in a way that makes me feel vulnerable and alive.

It is good, I think, to remind ourselves that we are fragile, that we can change, that we are always evolving, shedding, renewing ourselves — if we allow ourselves to. Like snakes, our outer skins shed and regrow, as a new part of our essence pushes itself to the surface. Our skin then getting itchy once more in preparation to shed again when it is time. Such is the nature of growth; of growing pains. What a beautiful thing, right? To realize that there is no end to becoming, that you can always enter an experience and emerge as someone new, with insight and awareness that eluded you previously. Insight that you earned by being willing to pass through a threshold of uncertainty, that you weren’t sure you were ready for or fully understood, by being willing to transform, without knowing who you would become.

I imagine this is how we stay young; we keep transforming as life goes on, without getting too stuck in who we think we are, in what we think we know. We allow life to take us to new edges of ourselves, and we accept the invitations to evolve as they appear. We transform, again and again. We let ourselves experience the unknown, with a sense of trust that we will learn something worthwhile along the way. We remain students in this classroom of life, humble and ripe, ready to absorb what is assigned to us. We depart from each lesson as something new, shedding and regrowing, evolving and transforming, all the while remaining close to ourselves, to our essence, to what we feel drawn to, as the uncertain journey continuously unfolds.

1-1 Clarity Coaching: Get clear on what you truly want and start living it. Learn more about my 1-1 coaching here.

Creative Liberation: Tap into your natural gifts, unblock yourself and share your ideas with the world. Learn more about my creativity + self-expression course here.

Related essays: becoming yourself is a process of reduction, on self-trust, comfort, why i quit status games, returning from the hero’s journey