Winds of Change

Everything is moving and I'm making rules for the journey

I write this outside in the cold, spring wind. It is a slow spring here in my garden. Grey days replace grey days and the sunshine is rare and fleeting. My seedlings hunch and hesitate in their cold frame, their growth ponderous and disheartening. I have only just begun to brave sits outside like this and still wear enough layers to puff me out comically, a hat on my head, my hands in their fingerless mitts. It feels like a stalemate. My desire for change vs. the season’s reluctance, both pushing against each other.

Still, change is happening, and the wildness of the wind shaking the garden around me is speaking its name. That’s why I wanted to be out here today to write this, here under the sky. Up, up, far above the blinkers of my garden, the moon is turning new. It is the second Aries new moon in row, a rare and motivating portent for those who know, and tomorrow it will block the sun in what is called a hybrid eclipse, something that only occurs a handful of times in a century. It is a time of endings and new beginnings. Its energy is being whispered by people who watch the skies and I have been able to feel it like the spring wind pushing and playing inside me, even here, even here in my small, strange cage in my small, strange life. Change has scared me in the past, but this time, I feel ready, as strong as a tree.

There is the kind of change that comes forced and the kind of change you decide to make. I don’t know what this time will be for you, but for me, at least, it is proving to be more of the latter. It has left me thinking a lot about how to harness change for good and something I have realised is that for good change to last, it needs rules.

The idea of rules can feel restrictive and punishing until you realise that you’re already living by a whole bunch of them, even if you don’t name them as that. There are self-made rules hidden in the long lists of things we tell ourselves we should do or should feel over and over, hidden in what we feel bad or frustrated about, in the un-thought-about habits and behaviours we repeat and reinforce each day, in the standards and expectations we’ve inherited. We’re all living by a kind of code. So, isn’t it better then to write yourself a more conscious set of rules? One you choose to live by every day? I think so. Without clear rules for myself, I’ve found I’m at the mercy of my fear, panic, guilt, fatigue, buffeted around by other people’s squashing ideas or by every transient feeling.

This is why I like rules and why in this time of change I have made a point of writing mine down: a map to follow as everything shifts around me. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d soon be swept down another path I didn’t want to be on, and worse, I might not even know it.

My rules aren’t anything to do with what I think I SHOULD do each day – no, these rules of what I WANT. Not in the future, but now, every day. I spent a quiet and transformative week writing them, inspecting them, mining them right down to the core of what I actually want. What do I want my days to include and not include? My heart? My mind? My self? Deep honesty. Brave honesty. No bullshit. No pretending. And yes, my rules are for every day without fail. Sometimes leaves too many openings for excuses and stalling. Every day, even just a little bit of something every day, means there’s no decision to make.

I won’t list them. I know we’re all ever eager for ready-made lists to be handed to us like that, but I think that’s part of the problem. It’s a part of how easily we can find ourselves living according to someone else’s code, so easily that we can go our whole lives never really finding out what we truly want ourselves.

What I will do though, what this time writing in the wild wind is for (and look at that – the sky has turned blue over my bent head!), what I will do is encourage you to do the same.

Change is in the air. Can you feel it? So, tell me how you want to live. Tell me what you want to do every day, or not do, what you want your life to look like. Go make your rules and decide you’re going to keep them. You could do this on any day of any year – any single day can be a new start – but tomorrow, when the moon is dark and powerful, that would be an especially meaningful time. The whole universe is behind you. Imagine that.

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