Comme Je Fus     

As I was

I know a woman who is very different today than she was six months ago.  She still works for the same company and has the same phone number, but she is not the same.  I don’t know that it is any better, from the woman she was last year, we can’t really know anyone but our own selves, and I don’t judge, anybody, so it is neither my place nor my desire to assess if this becoming is an improvement from the ‘before‘ or not.  All that matters is if she thinks it is.  All I really know for sure is that it is possible to completely let go of who you were, and become who you will be now, in just six months.  Will this new different person now be her?  Or is this new different person just a temporary her?  Who can know?  Perhaps even she doesn’t know.

STEP 6, for any of you who might be in need or want of a change, seems to be neither a question nor an answer…a pondering I suppose… and that it is a quote from Sex In The City, one of the best shows ever written, AND from Carrie Bradshaw, one of the best characters ever written (in my ever so humble opinion) just makes it all the more exceptional…Maybe some people need a year, maybe some people need a decade, maybe some people need more than just this one lifetime, to become who they will be… but I do know one thing, it turns out that six months is a period of time that is sufficient to transform one’s self fully in body, attitude, mind, and behavior.

I suspect that people can become so set in their ways and frameworks of thinking, their tiny boxes all in a row, that they, without intent, and without purpose, end up being closed off to ANYthing or ANY possibility that is different from what they “believe” they like, or want, or think.  I also understand that this type of person, even if they didn’t plan to, often becomes so judgmental because they simply can’t imagine thinking in some bigger way, or outside of their comfort zone.  I sort of see it as Dorothy living in sepia toned Kansas, and in Oz, opening the door into the bewildering awesomeness of something else, something new, something she never even dreamed of, magnificence that she never even imagined…THAT big!

That being addressed, it’s clear to me that people can change, and that they decide to do so when they realize that the rigid and unyielding small thoughts and somewhat close minded ignorance they had been living with is no longer serving them.  I don’t however believe for one second that it’s a regard as one way being “correct” and one way being “wrong,” but rather a blossoming, an awakening maybe, that exploring and experimenting with new ideas and new thoughts and new attitudes and new behaviors might lead to something “I didn’t even realize I’d want” so to speak…I don’t know if people who purposefully change drastically, necessarily consider their change “better,” only that because it is attempted with thought and planning, it’s recognition that *A has not been working the way I had anticipated, so I am going to try B.*

I hope if you feel you are in want of STEP 6 that if it is something as small as, “I think I want to shave my beard” or as enormous as, “I think I want to sell my house and move to Nepal and take a vow of silence” that you do it with care and attention to detail.  That you do it because it feels like it is what you want to do, not something you have to do.  That you do it because you want to be more than maybe you were.  Because, you know, like Alice says in Wonderland, “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”