One of life's great ironies is that when we finally realize there are things about ourselves that need to change (and finally commit to making those changes) we discover that change is hard and often frustrating and discouraging.
But...it is what it is. And life's ironies can be met with a grimace...or a grin.
We come into the world with certain 'proclivities' anchored in our DNA You like that word, proclivity? It's a word worth learning to like. It comes from Latin roots meaning 'forward' and 'down hill.' To have a proclivity for something means that 'that something' is as easy as walking (or rolling) down hill.
A good few of the things we'd like to change about our selves make up many of our 'proclivities.' They are habits that are as easy to fall into as rolling down hill.
Here's a great 'proclivity' story:
"When is comes to explaining personality, it's always true that nature and nurture work together. But it's also true that nature plays a bigger role than most people realize. Consider the identical twin sisters Daphne and Barbara. Raised outside London, they both left school at the age of fourteen, went to work in local government, met their future husbands at the age of sixteen at local town hall dances, suffered miscarriages at the same time, and then each gave birth to two boys and a girl. They feared many of the same things (blood and heights) and exhibited unusual habits (each drank her coffee cold; each developed the habit of pushing up her nose with the palm of the hand, a gesture they both called "squidging"). None of this may surprise you until you learn that separate families had adopted Daphne and Barbara as infants; neither even knew of the other's existence until they were reunited at the age of forty. When they finally did meet, they were wearing almost identical clothing." (from The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt)
Daphne and Barbara give us a wonderful glimpse of what we humans are working with (and against) whenever we want to do better, to act differently, to embrace change.
I've posted before how my life changed when an older friend said to me at nineteen, "For somebody so perceptive, you sure can be shallow." Those words--coming from that particularly valued friend--were words that I took to heart. Something in me knew he was right and something in me wanted to change. It felt less like a choice and more like an inevitability. But it's never felt like 'rolling down hill.'
The tension between our commitment to change and the slow process of moral, character, and spiritual transformation is often experienced as frustration. Most of us seem to have a proclivity for impatience and frustration--and self-recrimination!
Smile. Chuckle. Laugh. It is what it is. We are what we are. And yet...there is grace and ability for change. And I'm convinced kindness to ourselves--lovingkindness--oils the mechanism of transformation like nothing else.
Change is slow. Change is even slower when we beat ourselves up about it.
Try this: the next time you get frustrated with the pace of your own transformation, push up on your nose with you palm. Then say to yourself, "Squidging!" Think of Daphne and Barbara. Call to mind the Power of Proclivity. And smile.
Then put your hand over your heart. Give yourself three stout, generous pats. And call to mind that you're engaged in life's most important transformation--learning what love is, how it works in you and how it works in the world.
Smile again--or laugh out loud--life is what it is--and yet you're working with it because you're committed to make it more of what it can be. And that's an amazing thing.
