I am inspired by my experience as a teacher and by the work I do with my students. Below is a selection of the poems I have written.
Change
If you sat in the quiet and asked yourself what your greatest fear is, after the long silence and pause, in the distance far beyond control or reach, it would be the word change.
You see change happening around you, above you, below you, outside of you, and most importantly, in you. Change does not happen to you. That’s the tale we tell ourselves so that we can relinquish all sense of responsibility about how we feel and what we are at this point in time.
Change doesn’t happen without our involvement. Like a dance between two individuals, it only happens as a result of an interaction, and thousands of decisions are made without any thought to the process of dancing itself.
Organically, the dance evolves as one moves and another follows. The interplay with the music is the third partner. The vibrations of sound are the true leader of the dance. Music does not happen to the dancers. It is in partnership with them.
Change is like that. It is in partnership with me. I don’t sit and wait for it to come; I dance with it when it does. If I try to lead, I can’t follow, and if I follow, I can’t lead. So surrender to the great dance of the universe must happen.
I let go of the belief that we have control over change. This goes outside us as well. We do not have the power to change others. Only they truly own that key. Believing that we have that power makes the Universe smile.
Fear of change, I believe, happens as a result of our belief that we must stay happy forever and all the time. Anyone who has dropped their chocolate ice cream cone on the ground as a child knows this is impossible. Change often involves pain and even suffering. Proof that we do not have control over it or even the course of the path we are on sometimes. But that’s how we grow.
This causes the feeling of being out of balance. Like we lost control of the ride we were on. Sometimes, though, it’s at that moment of fear that we need to raise our hands in the air like a kid on a roller coaster ride and just let go. Embracing the wisdom that we sometimes have to fall before we can go back up. But with a smile next time, we fall as it becomes easier to stand each time we do. Allowing the wind to touch our skin and the sun to dance in the sky.
🕉
GB