waves of transformation

Hello everyone! Hope your weekend was a happy one. As January 19th (my birthday!) grows closer and closer, my mind naturally seeps into a super reflective place.  I guess it tends to do that often, but something about the turning of the new year and turning a year older all within less than a month really sets this happy/sad/meditative/inquisitive/introspective state of mind off. It's also been a crazy year, full of change, loss, growth, new jobs, new friends, losing touch with friends, growing closer with others—all  which have contributed to my rosy-colored glasses losing their tint and simultaneously coming into focus.  I don’t mean to sound so grave, but man life seems to get more complicated as we get older! And geez, look at me, I’m only 24!  I’m learning to live with this chaos and actually feel quite peaceful at my core….it’s just all of the other stuff that throws me off (insert partial sarcasm).  But, ah, so it goes…..

Anyway, skimming through my piecey mental list of where I was at this time last year and where I am now (and all of the in between), I noticed a common thread, or should I call it common distraction, that may have kept me back from being a better version of myself.  Like every 2/2 people, I am often extremely effected by change.  I even fear it sometimes.  Ya know, I’m not even 100% positive at this moment of what I wanted to change in the past year, but sometimes when I have one of those rare moments of total, I mean TOTAL peace, I’m like “oh yeah, this makes sense.”  But the change—taking the leap—is what scares the hell out of me.  Sounds all too familiar, right?  After hearing Julia Roberts say these words on the big screen after reading them a few months back in Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love,” I was reminded of how poignant and just plain comforting her observation and advice was. 

"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."

Note to self: replace use of the word change with word transformation. Doesn’t that sound so much better?  And it makes it a lot easier to accept the  truth that "we're always transforming, everyday."  Here's to transforming whatever you need to transform in your life, and to accepting the transformations we inevitably have no control over....baby steps. Always baby steps. Cin cin!