What it takes to change
Photo credit: Booker T. Sessoms 2024
It is wild to me how many of us have integrated the deeply individualistic and magical-thinking notion that change only can occur through massive sudden shifts. If forced, that is how destabilization happens. If organic, it is the culmination of masses of smaller actions anyway.
Take yoga. If you think you can force yourself into a pose from one day to another, you’ll be sorely disappointed (and both sore and disappointed). Like BKS Iyengar, the father of modern asana practice, notably wrote (paraphrased): your brain may say “we are doing this”, but if your knee says “not so much,” the knee wins. Every single time. If, on the other hand, you settle into a daily, steady, consistent practice, over time you’ll notice differences, even huge differences, in your flexibility and strength.
And also off the mat, when I think of my own life and community, I know that change is gradual, caused by many small actions and reactions. Tiny ways in which individuals over time shift and act differently, together.
So why is it that we are so prone to believe that, at the macro level, change can be instant and miraculous: an election, an apology, a new year’s resolution.
I think we want to believe these one-off events can generate massive, transformative change, because the alternative — the need for steadiness and consistency — is so much more work. It takes work to organize beyond an election to push for the policy changes and systemic shifts we need. It takes work to take accountability for our actions in a way that prevents future harm and repairs past transgressions. It takes work, and acceptance of failure, and recommitment, over and over again, to make the kinds of changes we usually associate with new year’s resolutions: dietary shifts, changes in habits, rewiring of our oh-so-adaptable yet oh-so-prone-to-habitual-thinking brains.
That is the work, though. There is no other way. Only steady, incremental commitment and re-commitment to our shared humanity, over and over, day after day.
