Change - the smooth way.

I was reminded today of the days back when we changed gears in our cars without the blessing of a gear-box that was ‘synchromeshed’. The result of changing gear in these vehicles meant one had to be prepared for a great deal of grinding and graunching (*) sounds during gear changes as metal plates found their way into re-emeshing correctly for the next gear - from first to second in acceleration, or for ‘changing down’ in slowing for a junction. The skill was to wait for the moment in which the all the cog-wheels flew into equal revolutions - float shifting - before engaging the next gear. Then the noise and graunching was minimalised. It took a skillful driver to sense and hear the engine, feel the impulsion, 'double clutch' well enough, read the incline up or slope down, in order to manage this successfully. Now we have modern clutches and well synchronised gear-boxes and have to do very little in the way of being present to the changing of gears as we drive. On we go, stereo blaring, car practically driving itself, mind elsewhere….

This is so like life nowadays; when we come to an inevitable (we are alive) point of change, we expect to ‘just change’ - to depress the clutch and have everything change smoothly and without any graunching. And if we find change sticky or uncomfortable, we assume there is a problem, and that we have clearly ‘got it wrong’... Yet, we haven’t; we just feel this because we aren’t 'sychnronised'. We haven’t been mechanised and homogenised like our modern vehicles. Life offers us change - over, and over, and over, and as FM Alexander once said, “Change is the one thing about which we can be sure in our life. It’s how we manage it which counts.” This is the thing: how we manage it is to not rush it. To not ‘graunch’ in an effort to get through it as soon as we can. No, we have to let the gear-box wheels fly - the metal plates spin - until they find a moment when they all co-ordinate and settle together in a new gear with which to move us forward. The spinning doesn’t really take long in the grand scheme of things, but if we push it, try to engage them too soon, there will likely be little bits of metal all over the road, passers-by leaping into the bushes in alarm, and a compromised, slowed-up vehicle to contend with. Yet if we lose focus and go beyond the point of co-ordination, we lose momentum and still hear graunching. There is a moment on the flying cogs, and life; a magic moment when it just happens, but only if we are both patient-and-present-in-the-pause. It's the pausing which is the magic trick.

So, during a life-change, and during forward movement into a plan, let your gear-box cog-wheels fly until they naturally fall into their new relationship for your next move ahead. Which basically means, listen, sense, and honour the space between, the pause, the zero, the neutral point; for it is here that change can happen most effectively and un-alarmingly.

(* graunching - my engineering father's onomatopoeic word for, well, the sound of metal parts graunching together!)