The Old Familiar
I’m sitting in the back of a black Mazda sedan, full of what can only be described as panic. Nothing is wrong, per say, but this is not how I start my days. I feel like a caged animal, clawing at the door handle and windows, begging to be let out. But I stay silent, keeping this bizarre feeling to myself. It’s not like my Lyft driver would have much to offer anyway.
The weather is less than ideal for bike riding today, which is how I would normally make my way to my college campus for class. I made the decision this morning that navigating thunderstorms in the morning followed by 25mph winds with 50mph gusts all afternoon is not how I want to spend my day. But here, sitting in this metal cage, I am feeling like I made the wrong decision.
It’s amazing to me how desperate and dependent I’ve become on my morning commutes. In class this morning, it tooks everything I had to not fall asleep and keep my focus on deontological ethics and how Kant was kind of insane (at least, I think that’s what my professor was saying, but maybe I missed something). Even my quad-shot oat milk latte, which is normally reserved for the groggiest of mornings, wasn’t enough to cut through the fog that had settled in my brain.
My whole morning has been off-kilter and weird, but what’s standing out to me the most is the fact that this is how I used to start every morning. So, in some sense, this is how I used to feel all the time—and I didn’t even notice.
Every now and again we’re blessed with moments like these on our journeys. And yes, I do mean blessed. One of our greatest skills as humans is our ability to adapt quickly to change. This means we’re resilient and flexible, and that we can find homeostasis nearly anywhere in a relatively short amount of time. The problem with this, though, is we can adapt too quickly to the positive change we create in our lives—meaning, we barely notice that anything’s changed.
This is why we crave the big, over-the-top, life-altering kinds of transformations. We want to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning to a life that is different in every way. Because this, we feel, is real change. We can point to a line in the sand and say, “There! That’s when/where it happened!” But we know those kinds of change rare stay long-term. As they say, easy come, easy go.
Real, meaningful, sustainable change comes slow. Inch by inch, day by day, week by week, like tectonic plates the movement can be almost imperceptible. And then, suddenly, we’re riding in the back of a car on our way to wherever it is we need to go feeling like a caged animal. I guess things have changed, huh?
That’s why, for however uncomfortable as they may be, these little moments of regression provide so much value. After nearly a year of riding my bike basically everywhere I need to go, and especially riding my bike to school for two semesters, being in a car on my way to class feels like I’m stuck in the trash compactor from Star Wars. I miss the connection and freedom I’ve now become accustomed to, and before, I didn’t even know I was missing it!
So when you find yourself back in something that’s an “old familiar,” notice how it makes you feel, and how that’s different from how it used to make you feel. That’s the growth! That’s proof that what you’re doing is working.
You only feel like a caged animal once you know what it’s like to be free.