Worry pulls at my gut, mixing my emotions with the slow, grinding wheels of change. It’s exhausting, waking up in the mornings, the thoughts in my head stoking the coals of anxiety that murmur happily in my chest. They don’t have the patience to wait out the fear of the change, my mind races too fast to be silent on such waiting matters.

Listening to the same music in my headphones, over and over again as I walk beneath starlight and sullen clouds well after midnight, mulling over my life in my head. Where is this going, where am I going. What happens next?

Change is terrifying. It’s euphoric. It’s amazing. It twists at your gut without care for what’s going on around you, without thought to what you want. It just happens.

You can’t expect it to wait for you to be ready, to prepare yourself for what’s coming. It’s an unstoppable force, an immovable object. When it knocks on your door, it takes you whether you want to go or not.

I’ve come across that moment too many times, pushed by the frothing current downstream, clawing at the riverbank for all I was worth. Don’t give in, but don’t resist with every fiber of your being either. You can’t push back forces that you can’t control. You can fight them all you like, but it only ends in more suffering.

Finding the good in the chaos, the malleable in the glacier of change that pushes at your back, makes the going easier. Make it work for you, keep your mind open to the possibilities.

I’ve had travel plans fall apart miserably, leaving me dripping wet in a mud clogged tent, scrambling to refund a plane ticket to Germany, screaming into the night alone in the Utah desert pressured to return home.

I’ve had relationships fail and friendships disintegrate, leaving me alone and confused, unsure of myself and who I was.

I’ve been trapped in school, in a winter choked city, waiting for the taste of sunlight on my skin, of pure wilderness air in my lungs.

We are all floating on our own lifeboats, letting the current push us around, unable to make sense of our paths. Grab an oar, guide yourself as you pick up speed towards your next destination. Create adventure from the monotonous, sense from the senseless.

Just don’t give up, even if your flesh feels confined to one patch of earth, clawing at the final threads of a safety net, a relationship, a dream.

Sitting on a mountaintop, watching the sun set over the distant razor line of the horizon, find your clarity amongst the mess that we call life.