Change Before You Have To
When I was in fourth grade, I came home from school one day, and before I’d even gotten my backpack off, my mom told me I had to go downstairs to practice piano. I stomped my foot like a two-year old and told her I didn’t want to.
If I remember right, my mom literally pulled me down the stairs and dragged resistant me into the piano room.
One of my brothers sat on the floor . . . holding our brand-new puppy.
“Oh. Sorry,” I sheepishly mumbled to my mom as I took the amazing, fragile, tiny, squirming nugget and pulled it close to my heart.
Like so many people, I hate being told what to do.
At the same time, a part of me longs to be dragged by the hand to the good stuff. Because otherwise, I might miss it. And because it’s exhausting, trying to figure it all out by myself.
Here in Japan, one thing has consistently yanked me toward wisdom—the sayings on t-shirts.
Like the one that recently read, “I move myself.”
The statement is so obvious, it almost seems pointless.
Almost.
Because it is a powerful reminder of our own agency, our own power and ability to move in and through the world. It means you can choose to go from here to another here, from this plot to that one, and every single move you make gives you the chance to grow and reflect and change.
Which reminds me of another t-shirt I just saw: “Change before you have to.”
That one hit me so hard that I stopped on the sidewalk and almost got hit by a bicycle carrying three bags of groceries and two toddlers.
Many of us do everything we can to avoid change, because we hate it. It creates upheaval. It forces us to adapt, adjust. It demands we have grit and resiliency, a sense of humor and humility.
These are the very characteristics my students lifted up this week when I asked them what they’ve learned during this experience.
I was trying to get them to see that the skills they’ve gathered here will be impressive in an interview for a job or to get into med school.
By deciding to study abroad in Japan, they chose to be willing and brave. To leave the familiar. To arrive in a place where they barely knew the language or the rules. They’ve had to figure it out for themselves as they are constantly being asked to deal with the unsettling and the unknown.
Like when a clerk puts a bag over your head.
All you wanted to do was try on a shirt, and you don’t know what in the hell is going on . . . until you realize they don’t want you to get makeup on the shirt.
That’s what this kind of an experience does: if you don’t know the rules, you have to be agile and nimble, willing to sit with the uncertainty and awkwardness until things settle and clear and resolve themselves.
This is not easy.
And it creates a baseline for handling other kinds of change.
Choosing to live a life where we change before we have to means that when we are suddenly asked to live a story line we’d rather not be living, we can trust ourselves to handle it. Because we’ve developed the skills and the courage to be open and alive to what is, whatever that may be.
Even if that means standing in a dressing room with a bag over your head.