Reinventing ourselves

In this episode, we explore how we ourselves can change, to meet the changing needs of a changing world…

People change.

Sometimes it’s the everyday small-changes that add up over time - such as the slow process of ageing that I know so well, and the small careless choices that, in my case, lead to the phrase “See you round” being, uh, a lot more literal than I would like…

Sometimes it can be somewhat forced upon us, by accident or illness, or by happier events such as becoming parents with the birth of a first child.

And sometimes it can be by a more deliberate choice - such as setting out to learn a new skill, perhaps, or the way that actors can transform themselves and their bodies to fit the needs of a new role.

But reinventing ourselves into a whole new form, a whole new way life? - ah, that’s something different…

---

One of the most extreme examples of this that I’d seen was from a long time back - almost half a century ago, now - when I was still at art-college, studying to be a graphic designer. There was another student there, maybe two or three years behind our cohort, by the name of Stuart Goddard. At first sight, he’d seemed nothing special: a bit quirky, perhaps, but that was hardly unusual amongst art students back then, and presumably still true today. Yet suddenly, without warning - literally over a single weekend - he changed into someone completely different. He moved in a different way; he spoke in a different way; even his face had changed somehow to a different form, more powerful, more certain. And he gave himself a new name: Adam Ant. He left art-college soon after, and instead blazed his own trail, soon as a world-renowned musician, actor, activist and more. Reinventing himself, in a truly spectacular way.

---

Right now, a colleague and I are both going through a similar, if, we’d hope, less-extreme version of reinventing ourselves. In both our cases, even though it’s somewhat forced upon us by the world in different ways, it’s still more by choice than anything else. Yet although for me it’s not a new experience - I’ve already had to do this at least four times now in my life so far, maybe more - it’s still not an easy thing to do. More accurately, it’s downright hard.

That’s because it’s far than just an everyday change, an everyday transformation - it’s much more intense than that. Perhaps the closest analogy might be what happens to a caterpillar at the end of that stage of its life: everything gets pulled apart, stripped down to its most basic elements until there’s nothing recognisable at all from the previous form, and then reassembled from there into a entire new state of being.

Yet even that is still not the right analogy. For a start, although there may be some physical changes, reinventing ourselves is not really a physical process as such. Instead, it’s much more about mindset than anything else - a transformation of the soul, maybe, at least in terms of that definition of ‘spiritual’ that I use in most of my work:

a sense of meaning and purpose, a sense of self and of relationship with that which is greater than self

Perhaps the main way that it’s different, though, is that for the butterfly, we know in advance where the change will end up: the whole thing is pretty much predetermined by DNA and all that. But for us humans, there’s no real certainty about where we’ll be, or even who we’ll be, by the end of it all. The best we can hope for, to prepare for the change, is to set up some kind of clarity about our values, standards, commitments, intent - what I sometimes call ‘the fourth checklist’ - and hold on to that throughout, as a metaphoric sheet-anchor to help us weather the storm.

And unlike the butterfly, for us there’s no protection, no conveniently-comfortable chrysalis-shell, hidden safely away in the background somewhere. Instead, for the most part, it all happens out there, right in the middle of our everyday interactions in the everyday-world, everything exposed, whether we like it or not. There’s nothing simple or linear about it: more like a constant chaos, a maelstrom of change from moment to moment. People might well deride us as crazy - which at times in this we often are, in their terms at at least, Much of it will seem crazy-making to us too, because whilst we’re in the midst of it all, the way we see the world, and interact with the world, can all keep changing almost from moment to moment. Bewildering. And also just plain exhausting: several times a day, it seems, I’ll find myself slumped on a bed or couch somewhere, thoughts still relentlessly churning, yet still trying to find at least some way to rest from the overload - and my colleague says it’s much the same for him too.

But yeah, it’s hard. It always is, no doubt about that. And, yeah, I’ll have to admit that this time I’m not doing it well at all. I need to get myself out there, interact with the world in a whole new way: yet instead I’m still making the same old mistakes, still hiding away from the world in the same dark corners, still the same self-defeating habits, the same escape-activities - or inactivities, to be more honest about it. Holding myself back, when I know I need to move forward, move on. It’s calling for a level of courage that I just can’t find in myself right now: too many old scars and fears, I suppose. Oh well.

But I will make it through, somehow: I have to. I know that. That in itself is enough to keep me moving on with all of this, however hard it may be, however long it may take.

---

Yet this isn’t just about me or my colleague, right here, right now: it’s about all of us, everywhere, everywhen. As the world changes around us, in every way, more and more, faster and faster, we’ll all have to get a whole lot better at reinventing ourselves to meet each changing need.

---