I pay attention to what it is I am wondering about when I wake up in the morning. Today it was the subject that never gets old, never goes away, never, ever changes: change.
I watched the fabulous American Symphony again last night. I am captivated by the part where Jon has been back to Juilliard and sees the mural with his image and in the car afterward he talks about how there was so much pushback around his style and his musical ways while he was a student there, so much so that people thought he was insane. And now there’s a mural about me, he says with what looks like both sorrow and incredulity.
It’s always astonishing to me, given the math around what’s possible in this life, how much people hate it when someone who does things differently—a maverick—shows up.
Maverick, by the way, has always been one of my favorite words. There used to be a gas station in Middlebury, Vermont called Maverick and I loved driving past that. It’s gone now, which doesn’t surprise me since Middlebury doesn’t strike me as much of a mavericky place.
I am not rooted to anything in this life and for a long time I felt sorry for myself about that. My parents grew up very much like orphans, with much-older or dead or institutionalized parents, and no siblings. It left them unmoored and that was transferred to me. There was no place we returned to, no Grandma’s kitchen or Grandpa’s fishing spot. There were no stories, no history. I saw this as a handicap until I looked at it from a different angle and saw that it’s a blessing.
No baggage, no dusty traditions, no rules, no weight.
It’s the reason why I love change. I love novelty and I love the challenge of responding to the new thing. I love imagining the better way. I love infiltrating situations to question why things are done the way they are.
Rootlessness gave me this gift.
I have received a lot of pushback in my life, a lot of hate and anger during the times when I entered into situations where people are ‘traditional’ which is a fancy way for saying not open to change and questioned or changed things.
If I had a dime for every time I heard someone say we’ve always done it this way when I ask why I would have a lot of dimes.
I do think that some people are born to move humanity forward. I’m sure that Jon Batiste is one of them. He’s a prophet, in my book of leaders. But it really is crazy what one has to endure to get there, the cost that comes with being unique, new, unfamiliar. Joyfully so!
There was a time in my life when my biggest dream was to have kids, a house and a fence that kept the dogs in. I really, truly wanted that life. And when I got it I was miserable, a reality that shocks me to this day. I kicked and yelled my way out of that, then, like a true idiot, set up another similar scenario, only this time with a water view—such a nice life! Then when the same realization settled into my bones, I kicked and drank my way out of that. Boy, have I make a lot of messes in this life. It took me a really long time to understand things about myself, which, in fairness, could be because I had no elders to transfer generational stories to me, I had to figure out me all by myself, which, I guess does take a lot of meltdowns, mistakes, wrong turns and bad behavior.
Life is like one of those funny games where you set the whole tower up and it’s really shaky so when you take one or two pieces out the whole thing crashes down. Then you rebuild, hopefully with new ideas about sturdiness.
Well I’m at sturdy now, a mere 58 years into this, go me! And I’ve got a microphone every week, not sure who to blame for that. And I basically say the same things over and over: life is change, from one end to the other, You are changing right now, while you’re sitting there reading this. Tonight will not be the same as this morning. Everything, everyone, all day every day, is changing.
Maybe then stop with all the resistance. Try to meet some of it with curiosity. Less fear, more spirit of inquiry. Remember what that was like when you were a kid? Or if you spend time around kids and you notice how they’re joyfully curious about everything? That!
There are a lot of people out there who want to keep you in a state of fear because when you live in fear you are more susceptible to other peoples’ ideas. Many of those ideas have to do with things you should buy, drugs you should take, habits you should cultivate that will result in those people having lots and lots of money.
I’m not sure that’s what you want from your life or for yourself. I know what I want and I think what you want, too, is freedom. And that freedom comes when you are willing to accept that life is changing all the time, you are not a victim of this, you are the fortunate participant in this moment in time and your job is to meet the situation, whatever it is, light or dark, fun or scary, new or familiar, with your whole self. That’s your job. I hope you figure that out sooner than I did and I hope you can get there drinking less wine than I did, but I really, really hope for you that today is the day you are willing and able to live in that truth; you are here for a blip on the evolutionary calendar, for a nanosecond in time. You are not here to make bad people richer, you are here to live in joy, to generate joy, to help people who need help and to create a beautiful life, for yourself and the people you love. I’m not making this up! But I do know it to be true.
I love you, please smile more and sing the song of change all day every day until it is in your bones and your brain and every single thing you do all the time. It’s beautiful, this messy life, it is so so beautiful. And so are you. xomo
🥰🥰🥰grandiose hugs