We spend a lot of time on a tugboat. One of my favorite seats is at the pilot house windows, looking out over San Francisco Bay. It’s a big boat so it takes a long ocean swell to really get it moving. The chop or a wake from a passing cruiser rarely make much of an impression on the tug for long, but the swell from the sea has a longer period, the crests coming more slowly, more closely matching the length of our hull. That kind of swell is what a restless vessel seeks, something to ride to know what it was made for, the open water.
Our boat is a big Army tug meant for ocean duty. It was also used in the harbor for moving military ships around. It’s survived a lot of abuse by weekend warriors, men who probably never really mastered the finer points of maneuvering a large vessel in tight spaces. There are sizable dings in the rail and some of our boat deck bumpers have crushed their brackets.
This boat has lasted over 50 years because it was built very tough and designed to ride most of what comes its way. It’s the perfect place for us. My husband, Joe Flower, is a futurist, a tracker of trends and a student of history. For him life is a long flow of patterns and events that we navigate. He believes that when we try to stop in place we lose what power we have to subtly influence that flow.
As a psychoanalyst, I see things similarly but with a different emphasis. To me, what goes on inside us is the flow, too. What carries us flows right through our minds in some form or other, and though each – the inside, the outside – has its reality, how we experience those realities is always given form and color by the filter that is our minds.
As I said in Change is All About Flow, Isn’t It? one can reduce reality to its most basic elements, that we are the stuff of the universe, energy and mass assembled in human form, tunneling, spinning, and accelerating through the eons along with everything else. For the time that we are human, we sense this experience in our unique ways, why and how we still don’t know.
It’s impossible not to want, to covet, to fear, to reject, to wish time would stop so we could hold on tight to the people we love. But there’s nothing like being in a moving, groaning structure to remind you that we are all in motion, always in motion, that conditions and life are always changing. I love that sensation. And sometimes I really don’t love it. But that’s the way it is.
You could say that the challenge of vitality is the surfer’s, finding the leading edge of the swell and riding it. But as we all know, that requires a lot of skill, some rare opportunities, and for the big waves, courage.
Many people think of change as something to survive, get through, or, superficially, a kind psychological surfing, an ongoing attempt to stay astride that claw of water. But you have to remember: the change wave is not just coming from outside. It’s formed by the fetch of history, the momentum of events and what lies beneath, inside of you. That momentary consciousness, the I you think is you, may ride it, but we are all these waters, no matter how much we struggle against it. Change is your being, you are moved.
If you search through the spiritual practices of the world you will find all the techniques – for disciplined resistance to change, for ways to let the waves pass through you, or for ways to ride them out. What I propose is that it’s up to you. It all depends on how you want to live.
It’s a moment-to-moment choice, it’s a day-to-day choice, it’s a choice you make, a choice you ignore, or a way of life, requiring no thought at all. And if you’re not up for the big waves, there are many smaller, subtler, momentary ways where you can find that live edge.
When I am my happiest and most at home in myself, I am like some water-dwelling creature, an amoeba, free-forming in the direction that my edge takes me. But there are always other times. You have to be ready to swim.
