You Grow and Change or Shrink and Stagnate

This applies to your art, too.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. It cannot be denied, avoided, ignored, or stopped. It can, will, and does happen. Whether glacially slow or lightning fast, change is inevitable.

People fear change. This is what causes ideas and practices of fundamentalism and reactionaryism to grow and thrive. Fear of change and nostalgia for what was — often with a lot of bias and attached Pollyanaism — create logjams and bottlenecks that can do some really weird shit to the world.

You have little to no control of change in the world. There is nothing you can do when it comes to all the people, places, and things outside of you. When change happens, you get to choose how you respond to it, if at all.

It’s so very easy to place your focus outside of yourself. Hell, you’re often encouraged to do just that. However, the reality is that you can’t do anything with or for what is outside of you. Because of the societal insistence on looking so strongly at the world without, the world within gets disregarded, shunted to the side, and even ignored.

And that’s the problem. Because the world within is what you have any control over. Who, what, where, how, and why you are on every level is yours to choose. That’s where you…