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Surely you’ve seen it before scrolling through your social media feed; this quote, this notion that we have two choices: evolve or repeat?
The word evolve comes from the Latin word ēvolvere, which means “to unroll”. Interesting because I like to think of evolution as an unfolding; of un-doing of all the things, of who and what we thought we were supposed to be and do.
It’s also interesting because rolling or rolling up (something) is much more difficult than unrolling it. There’s more resistance, or force of gravity rather, in the rolling than the unrolling. Which makes sense going back to the concept of our “unfolding”.
In our journey, our life experiences, many are based on other’s expectations or societal agreements that we, too, went along with. And it’s as if our soul knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. There’s this constant underlying resistance, in rolling up, in measuring up to those expectations...and we end up exhausted and often times, miserable from it - playing this role we believe is expected of us, however or in whatever way that manifests. It can leave underlying resentment, frustration, questioning why if we’ve checked all the boxes so to speak, we still feel like something’s missing. (This also takes a a toll on our nervous systems but will expand on that topic later.)
Until we realize that it isn’t working anymore. That said, it isn’t easy to choose differently for ourselves; especially because that impact often reaches beyond ourselves, and we are conditioned to rely on external approval and acceptance. So we are caught in this fluid spectrum of discomfort; oscillating between states of feeling stuck or repeating what we don’t want and the desire of choosing something different for ourselves. Until the discomfort of one state surpasses the discomfort of the rest.
For me the awareness comes in this moment... when the discomfort of staying stuck outweighs the discomfort in taking action, to grow and to change.
The discomfort around change is usually rooted in fear of some kind. Fear is always going to be a part of our human experience, no matter how evolved we are, no matter what strides we have made in our growth. Until our time is up, until we have accomplished everything we were intended to, fear will be there. So the growth comes in having the awareness of the fear and moving forward through it anyway. This is courage.
Courage is a requirement for change, however large or small.
Ultimately, we were in fact meant to evolve; to self actualize. From the rolling up to the unrolling; the folding to the unfolding; the checking-of-all-the-boxes to the evolution. The unfolding, whether soft or harsh, still involves courage to take action... And I choose courage. I choose to evolve. There is in fact an ease, a lessening of resistance in the evolution state than the endless uphill in checking all the boxes; a let-go-and-flow kind of feeling of being carried in the unfolding, and freedom in this magnificent evolution.