Changemakers Confidential: Cousin Anne

Real stories. Real people. Real change.

Welcome to Changemakers Confidential, where we share real stories from real people on real change. Our update this week comes from Cousin Anne; she’s my mother-in-law’s cousin and was introduced to me as such, so apparently the name seems to have stuck! :) I came away from our conversation with unexpected - and welcomed! - insights, as well as a fresh take on the role of change as it contributes to progress and growth. I have to say, these updates are filled with amazingly insightful people like Cousin Anne, and I am deeply grateful to share their wisdom and life experience with all of you, so we may all learn, grow, and progress, wherever we may be on our life’s path.

Well, first off: I don’t think about change. I think about progress. We should expect to progress, to always move forward. Change isn’t always moving forward in a better way. Change can also be moving backward; all change is not progress. Progress is our goal as human beings, our raison d’etre. Change can occur, but not always in furtherance of something better, in support of progress and growth. Change can be disruptive, jarring, an event that arrives out of nowhere. Progress is often a quieter affair; it’s enduring and ongoing, occurring throughout our lives. 

Where have you seen examples of change and progress show up in your life? I’ve seen it in divorce. When divorce happens, a person can make a bunch of changes; maybe they start going out, meeting new people in new places, go clubbing. That does not mean that they have progressed from the situation that led to the divorce: who they were or what happened in that situation. In my own life, when I got divorced, there wasn’t a lot of change. I stayed in the house, I had the children. But I experienced a lot of progress. How so? I learned the importance of spirituality, and the spiritual path, in one’s life. When you depend on your spiritual center, rather than on a specific person or situation, you have progress. In marriage vows, we say “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” The reality is that no man or woman can put a whole person asunder. Who we are created to be endures, no matter what the circumstances. 

What’s the role of spirituality in progress? Our whole goal in life is to dematerialize ourselves. To distill down to our essence, which is spiritual in nature. Let me share something with you: I have a friend who lives in New Hampshire, who has a pasture where hot balloons land and tether to the ground so they don’t lift away. I’ve come to see that as a metaphor on how we can spiritualize our thinking. Our goal is to get rid of those tethers that hold us to the ground, and  every time we get rid of one - our fear of lack, for example - we can cut that tether and we rise a bit off the ground. However, the more tethers we cut, the harder the remaining ones hold on. All of the weight that the other tethers held goes into the remaining tethers, and it gets exponentially more difficult to cut those cords. More work, more strength, and more courage is required. And it’s because once we cut that last tether, we fully rise, ridding ourselves of all that held us back. This is change in the name of true progress.

It’s important to note here that everyone’s tethers are different. Self-awareness has to be cultivated; discernment has to happen, too. Change can create awareness in a moment; it’s our opportunity to pay attention and get curious about what is happening within ourselves in response to that change. It may not be the change itself that changes us, but now we’ve got a ripple in our consciousness that wasn’t there before. Are we going to listen and move in the direction of  progress, or are we going to brush it off and keep doing what we’ve always done in that situation? The choice is up to us. 

Descartes: je pense donc je suis - we are what we think (Cousin Anne was a French professor for many years, so her mention here of Descartes seemed apt to include).

As we go through life, our thinking progresses, too. It matures, and sometimes it falls back. The important thing is to take action without doing it for an audience. So much in life is done for approval, the approval of others. Once we are able to establish who we are, we don’t need an audience. We do things because they’re the right thing to do. 

When I was teaching, for all of my classes, I tried to fit this concept in at some point in the semester (she held up a drawing of a line, with a drawn circle at each end; this was inspired by the author Elie Weisel, author of Night): this line is our life. At one end, there are biological laws that we all must follow (i.e., swallowing, digesting, breathing). At the other end, there are human laws that we impose on ourselves and on society so we can live together in society. Now, think about the person you respect most in life. Ask yourself, does that person do things in their lives because a law says they can (or can’t) or because it’s the right thing to do?

If you do something because it’s right, it’s without the need for approval or to perform before an audience. We’ve dropped that tether. The need for approval is an enslavement. Once we drop that need, we can do things more because they’re right.

Does the phenomenon of change exist only because it’s something we can see? If we can “unsee” change, and have it be more about the internal progress and growth we experience, is change even real? If we put change within the realm of the unseen, our internal response to change - what we think and feel, and how we grapple with new meaning - becomes the focus of the resulting progress. Our culture today is all about being seen; we have to work hard to not be seen. Maybe it’s within the unseen that true progress occurs and where we’re able to change our mindset. We all have to have that dialogue within ourselves, so we can show up differently. If change - and progress - become unseen, it’s more purely motivated, more self-motivated, from a place of spiritual inquiry and growth. 

Years ago, I was a part of an Alateen group. A step in their 12-step program is to do something good for someone else without being seen/noticed. If the person finds out, it doesn't count. What’s interesting is that no matter what you do, by way of a physical act, you can eventually be found out. So, it has to be something mental or internal: a loving thought, an encouraging thought. That is progress. 

Another example of that is with social causes that I’ve been involved with over the years. There is a visibility component to them, no matter how true the spirit of the cause. Once, in support of one of my causes, I was at a cocktail party in a lovely home, where you could think, wow, this is a lovely home. I found, though, that for me, it didn’t matter who owned the house or how lovely it was supposed to be with the furnishings, artwork, or people inside. I thought to myself, the concept of beauty has come to me today via this home. I don’t have to physically own it. These are the progressive steps. 

What happens when the tethers become reattached or come back to us in a different way? How do we stay vigilant in meeting those challenges, when we feel we’ve already lifted those tethers? I’ll start with myself, and then will speak in general. I spend the first three hours of every day, between 6-9am,  in spiritual and metaphysical study. Everyone knows not to disturb me during that time. During those hours, I’m really looking at myself. What is there, where do I need to examine deeper, what is there for me to learn. That continuous process - and time spent - in inquiry and reflection helps me see where I’m still tethered and the work I need to do to release it.

However, if we’ve truly vanquished a tether, it doesn’t come back. If we allow a little piece of it to stay or return to us, it’s still there. If you really give it up, you don’t have to worry about it coming back. If you have to demonstrate a high level of self-will against something, it’s still there. Once I’ve struggled and come out the other side, I’ve released the tether. How does the concept of surrender play a role here? I wouldn’t say surrender; I would say vanquished. If you see a problem and you make a reality of it, it becomes a problem for you. If you don’t make a reality of it, it doesn’t have a hold on you. If something becomes a reality, it’s very difficult to get rid of it.

So, how do you not let those problems become a reality in the first place? That’s why I spend all that time in the morning, studying! Let me give you an example: we’ve had snowstorms here on the East Coast for the past few weeks (she lives on Cape Cod), so my sidewalk and driveway have been covered in snow. I’ve got company coming tonight for supper, so I wanted to have a clear walkway for them to get to my front door from the driveway. So, I thought to myself: it’s the right thing for me to do, to shovel this snow off my sidewalk. I have the strength to do it. And so, I was able to break up the ice and shovel away the snow. Now, if I had said, well, I’m 81 years old, I can’t do it, I have to be careful, now I’ve gone and made a reality of that situation. The snow brought change - I chose to accept the challenge of change and to be grateful for it! I do that in my life, as well, because change is vitality! 

I can’t even tell you how much I found myself nodding my head and pausing to take in the depth of what Anne was saying throughout our conversation on change. I was truly in the presence of a wise spiritual guide, who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of progress and growth, inspiring us all to go inward more, to be discerning when change comes to our front door and to see it as an opportunity to get curious, to gain a deeper awareness of ourselves, and to more accurately see our role in the progress we can make in this lifetime.

Thank you deeply to Cousin Anne for sharing her change story with us today, and I humbly ask her forgiveness if I’ve misinterpreted or misrepresented anything here from our time together. If you loved reading Cousin Anne’s story and would like to hear more real stories from real people on real change, please subscribe to Changemakers Confidential, and share it with other changemakers you know. Thanks for reading - see you next week! 

Warmly,

Kristina

Chief Change Maven, Changemakers Confidential