55) The Wind of Change

The world is closing in

And did you ever think

That we could be so close

Like brothers

The future’s in the air

I can feel it everywhere

Blowing with the wind

Of change

…

Taaaaaaake me to the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams 

With you and me

— Scorpions

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Some thoughts on wind. 

Wind comes from temperature & pressure differentials.  In other words, when there’s an average DIFFERENCE across a section of the earth, it ‘motivates’ the wind to blow, you might say.  Or, to be less anthropomorphic, wind “self-organizes” because of the gradient caused by the difference.

But, that change is not an average, overall effect.  Even though a shit-tonne of wind has to blow when, say, a storm front moves in, or there’s a big temperature drop, it’s not like the trillion billion bits of air just slide on over to some new place and equalize everything, all nice and smooth-like.

Hells no!  It’s chaotic!  It’s turbulent!  There’s almost as many air-bits flowing in the WRONG direction, as there are in the RIGHT direction.  (Sometimes, over short periods of time, even more!)

Just go outside when the wind blows and see if your hair, the leaves, sand, are all moving in a uniform direction.  Of course not!  There are swirls and eddies, gusts and backdrafts.  It’s Chaos! But this Chaos is good. It’s part of the necessary yin/yang of keeping Order from stultifying and constraining everything into uniformity. And, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it’s just the way things are. Processes of change ARE turbulent.

So, when you see the turbulence in something, don’t say, “this is bad! This process of change must be failing!” No, the turbulence is a sign that shit’s goin’ down. It’s a good sign. Although, it’s a rough ride sometimes.

Personal change is like that too.  Go to therapy, watch yourself travel your healing arc.  Sometimes, you make massive progress and feel awesome, like you’re really getting somewhere.  And then….boom….you’re fucked.  You feel like you just took 12 steps backwards.  

I’ve gone into my therapist’s office for a few weeks in a row and been like, man, am I ever doing better.  And it’s great.  I feel like a million bucks.  I’ve “turned the corner”.  And then, a week later, I’m apologizing for being such a failure, for wasting all these weeks, all these months, when it feels like I’m even further away from “wellness” than I was when we started.  

But….it’s just turbulence.  Change is always like that.

Societal change is like that too.  It’s not a smooth process.  There is no moment when we suddenly all decide, “let’s fix the climate”, and then governments pass great policies, corporations adopt great practices, and citizens clean up their own ecological footprints, and we all move together into one big happy Kumbaya-singing family.  

No way is that gonna happen.  It’s gonna be a shit-show.  As we make progress, other ‘factions’ will strengthen their resistance to pull us backwards.  Animosities will arise.  Backlashes will occur.  It’s inevitable.  And it’s ‘good’ in the sense that it ‘motivates’ the processes of change to get more powerful.

It’s how the wind blows.

If you expend all your energy trying to Establish Order, then it’s like you’re trying to stop the wind. That is not wise. And it’s doomed, absolutely doomed, to fail.

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I live in Canada.  Experiencing a 20 degree drop in temperature from one day to the next isn’t a disaster.  It’s “just the weather”. And yeah, Canadians talk about the weather ALL THE TIME. It’s one of our favourite things to do. Right up there with apologizing, drinking beer, and shaking our heads at American politics.

But yeah man, we get a lot of wind up here. Especially in the spring and fall.  It’s dramatic.  It can be a pain in the ass.  It messes up your hair.  (Or makes it look sexy, depending on your preference for neat and tidy vs. windblown and unkempt).  Me, I think it’s sexy.

And even though each little air-bit is unpredictable, chaotic, almost freaking random, nevertheless, over time, with a consistent “gradient”, chaos —> order.  Things change.  

Healing happens.  Hearts open. Society evolves.  

It’s messy.  But keep at it.  It pays off eventually.  

• pic of Greta Thunberg from https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/08/05/210371/210371