How people cope with this myriad of questions is fascinating, and my role as a therapist is to set aside my own search for greener grass and everything that has come with it, and simply help them explore their own journey. Does this sound easy? As it turns out, sometimes you can feel a physical pull on your heart. Sometimes your brain screams words. Sometimes your eyes well up with your client's tears, because their grass has caused them so much pain. Sometimes they way you picture your client's pasture looks like it could have neighbored your own at one point or another, and you just want to show them the way to a new pasture with a babbling brook and friendly faces. And sometimes you think 'boy, wish I could go back to that grassy knoll.'
We have two very different paradigms for change. Therapists say "change is hard" and scientists say "the only constant is change." Both are true, of course, but why? I've been pondering this, and I think at times the relationship is causal. As humans, on some level, we figure out eventually that life is going to keep changing. Nothing we can do will stop it. So we cling to what is familiar. And when what is familiar becomes unhealthy, we sometimes cling harder, adapting in multiple unhealthy ways because change is the big scary monster in the closet. There are individuals who have built an entire life around this, and experience anxiety just thinking about doing something different. Other people believe they have figured out that the only constant is change, and they embrace a life of no stability, yet unconsciously they cling to this ideal to a point that it is a constant.
Last night, Nathan and I were talking about his birthday last year. This was around the time I got my second dirt bike; I graduated from a CRF80F to a TTR 125. In dirt bike terms, that means I went from a bike sized for an eight or ten year old to a bike sized for someone about my height. Turns out that for his birthday, Nathan also got a gopro camera. So, we went to a (then) new riding area, Tahuya State Forest. We rode a gravel road and took a trail that has a wide dead end. On my little 80, I could always touch the ground, so I would simply walk the bike through the forest. It didn't mean I could always turn, but I developed the habit of turning by walking in a circle with my bike under me. Which required stopping almost to a dead stop because riding while walking had gotten me in to big trouble in the past. But this fine day, I was on a new bigger bike, and walking through the turn was no longer a (dangerously bad habit forming) option. So, we have this 'fabulous' video with Nathan's new camera of me stopping halfway through the turn, and tipping over, over and over and over and over and over. Because I couldn't change my habit. I clung to it because it made me feel safer to slow down or stop my bike than to go fast enough through the turn to complete it.
Over the spring, I gained skills. There is a trail out there called Mission Creek Trail. The first time we tried it, I made it about 5 of the 15 miles. I was exhausted. I continued to ride too slow, letting every rock push me around, tried to walk through every corner. By the time we turned around, the trail had gotten so complicated for me and I had gotten so tired, that Nathan was riding my bike for me for 50 feet, he'd walk back and ride his bike back to me, and I'd have stopped again, trying to figure out the next obstacle. Eventually, we made it to riding I could do again, and we would call this new state of being "dirt bike drunk" because I really had little physical, mental, or emotional control over my riding. It was chaotic and if Nathan hadn't have been so worried about me hurting myself, it might have been funny. There's a section we nicknamed Endor because of the trees and roots and undergrowth... And we laugh at Endor because I tried to "just go faster" through it and became a ping pong ball on wheels for a short time before face planting in a puddle between two large trees.
Fast forward to the end of last summer. I've been really working on improving my skills. I know I've gotten better, but change can be slow, so I don't know how much better. Somewhere in the middle of this story, I get a new bike, a kx100 that I am head over heels in love with. We had tried Mission Creek enough times to know that it was hard enough for me that Nathan didn't have as much fun as when we did easier trails. But, it was worth trying again. And boy, what a difference. Mission Creek Trail, when you ride it above the balance point and don't try to walk through the corners, is a blast. When we got through a particularly fun section, Nathan said "do you know where we are?" I of course did not, and he said "Endor!" Say what? I seriously felt like the trail maintenance fairies had come out and made the entire trail easier. I even did the black diamond section (in two tries. But I did it!)
Struggling through change, we don't see the progress we are making. Change can be slow and it can be hard. Yet when we do go back and revisit our old pastures, we see them with new eyes. It can feel like the world is a better, safer, happier, more interesting place. In the midst of the struggle, we can experience self doubt. We can feel like our surroundings are working against us. Yet if we continue the struggle, find joy in the struggle, and let ourselves rest and look back, we can see that we have climbed new mountains, forded new rivers, and found our own pasture. And it matters less whether the grass is greener, because as it turns out, it is our internal experience that lets us see the color of the grass, it has very little to do with the grass itself.
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