The trouble starts when your self is too reliant on your occupation, your location, or your lifestyle. You wonder: Without these identifiers, who are you? So you don't quit your job, you don't change location, and you keep at a lifestyle, even if it doesn't fit your self so much anymore. You begin to push against a stream, then a river, then an ocean. You're forcing the square peg in the round hole. And, as they say, if you don't bend, you break.
But we need stability in our lives. Even when we're switching career paths or moving to a new town, we still want other aspects of our lives the same. We won't drop our pets, our belongings, or our hobbies at every whim; we try to bring them with us, to make sense of the new worlds of work and land. But sometimes change even happens to these things, and we hope that to keep other parts stable.
You are floating down the river and grab a rock in the middle to hold yourself against the tide. It is work to hold on, but you are steady. It is work because change is always happening, even though you are in the same spot in the river. The river carries along with it new things for you to see and collect. When you're holding too much, you let it back go in the river. And sometimes, when the waves push too hard, you let go until you find another spot to hold on to.
I say all this because we do not live in spurts of change and stability. We are constantly changing, constantly stable. It just depends on our circumstances that we know what to keep the same and what to change. And it depends on our abilities of grace to work with what Earthly Chance keeps the same and inevitably changes.
I say all this because I need to think about what in my life is worth keeping stable and what is worth changing. The lost and gained opportunities of new jobs, more specifically. To stay in wildland firefighting, a relatively stable choice, or to chance it with the world and what I can make of it. Neither more correct than the other, but the latter much more chaotic and stressful as resounding change occurs. Regardless, my home will keep stable, my family stable, my wishes and desires for the future stable.
But we need stability in our lives. Even when we're switching career paths or moving to a new town, we still want other aspects of our lives the same. We won't drop our pets, our belongings, or our hobbies at every whim; we try to bring them with us, to make sense of the new worlds of work and land. But sometimes change even happens to these things, and we hope that to keep other parts stable.
You are floating down the river and grab a rock in the middle to hold yourself against the tide. It is work to hold on, but you are steady. It is work because change is always happening, even though you are in the same spot in the river. The river carries along with it new things for you to see and collect. When you're holding too much, you let it back go in the river. And sometimes, when the waves push too hard, you let go until you find another spot to hold on to.
I say all this because we do not live in spurts of change and stability. We are constantly changing, constantly stable. It just depends on our circumstances that we know what to keep the same and what to change. And it depends on our abilities of grace to work with what Earthly Chance keeps the same and inevitably changes.
I say all this because I need to think about what in my life is worth keeping stable and what is worth changing. The lost and gained opportunities of new jobs, more specifically. To stay in wildland firefighting, a relatively stable choice, or to chance it with the world and what I can make of it. Neither more correct than the other, but the latter much more chaotic and stressful as resounding change occurs. Regardless, my home will keep stable, my family stable, my wishes and desires for the future stable.