Weather, the Canadian Teacher of Change

Musings on a Spring day with 'many weathers'

Here in Canada, talking and often complaining about the weather is a common past-time.

Today, most residents of Toronto woke up to glorious Spring sunshine. Warm breezes carried the sounds of birds and human-folk wearing tee-shirts hopped along our busy streets.

Photo by Aniket Bhattacharya on Unsplash

But it now afternoon. And my part of the city is covered in a few centimeters of snow.
We moved from a warm spring to a blustering winter’s day in under 5 hours.

This is actually one of the reasons I love living here.

Weather teaches us so much change, several times a day!

Photo by Floraf on Unsplash

It is common to fear change, despite all the gifs and memes that tell us how wonderful and inevitable it is.

Maybe we fear failure or think that we aren’t good enough to commit to our dreams. We keep conjuring situations that are unfavourable and paralyze ourselves.

Maybe we are so entrenched in our habits and our ways, that the idea of change evokes threat, fear and doubt within.

Maybe we are surrounded by people or are in a situation that isn’t supportive or conducive to walking a different path.

But the funny truth of it, is that we already change.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

On a day like today, we may have changed (or added to) our clothing layers four times already, since that is how often the weather changed.

Perhaps we planned to make a nice Spring salad for dinner when awoke to a sun-filled day; but now we’d rather make a stew because the temperature dropped by 15°C in a few hours.

Our weekend plans may have changed, either because we initiated the change or our people did.

It could just be that we look outside to what is now our snow-covered back-yard and decide to book a trip to Mexico.

If we did any of these, then we are creatures of change.
We are it and already live it - it is already our process.
So, what is it that we actually fear?

For me, when it comes to big life changes, I tend to think on it a lot, which in itself is not a bad thing. It becomes unhealthy, when all I do is think and I take no steps in any direction.

Here, I stagnate in a massive sinkhole of ‘what ifs’ - thoughts and emotions that have a dense, sticky and worrisome quality. So, of course they cause fear and doubt and make it easier to cling to what we already know.

So, truthfully, is it truly just the notion of change that causes fear?
Or do we invite fears when we swirl for a long while in cerebral contemplation of what we do not know?

A lot of us are more held back by fear of the unknown than we would like to acknowledge. For me, trying to sort the unknown by thinking about it is a circular road that goes nowhere. So, this requires other ways and other skills to move through the mystery of what is unknown to us.

Fear, in itself is not a bad thing. Acting or not-acting from a place of fear is a choice that tends to limit, stifle or stagnate us. So, the medicine here may be to simply acknowledge it and take a step towards our intended and desired path.

Obstacles, delays, false starts, betrayals and failures may come towards us.

If we are in fear, then they will tend to shrink us.
If we are in Courage, then we accept them, learn from them and use them to grow.

And so, if change, like the weather, is a natural process, then taking some moments to appreciate its true nature and function in our lives could be the best thing to do today.

I wonder if our fear of change is because we unconsciously react to it by thinking it is an event, rather that a process in motion.

Processes are much more relational; by this I mean a process is fluid and is informed by what it is in relationship to. As such, at any point through the process, we can pivot, adjust, pause, intensify, meander, leap, nap or soar. It’s actually quite dynamic and gives us a lot of options on our path.

So, the next time the weather in whatever land we live upon behaves oddly, maybe we can start enjoying it for what is it is. And just for a moment, open to holding a relationship or wonder with it.

Who knows what amazing thing will blow onto our path on the next wind.