A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
Laozi
2023 is my second year of transformation. 2021 was my first.
Have you every heard of a singularity? It is where mathematics misbehave and the answer goes to infinity. The outputs are not determinable from the inputs.
In February 2021, I hit a kind of a mental health singularity. What had been before could not predict what was to come, and my depression and despair approached infinity. In that moment I was transformed.
I hate the passive voice. I find it awkward and grating, but I use it here because it describes an action happening to me. I am not the same man I was before that moment. I didn’t choose it, and I do not like what I have become.
So, I have devoted 2023 to transformation, but this time conscious transformation, active voice transformation. I replace, “I was transformed,” with “I am transforming.”
This act of personal transformation is different from the previous one. It is active, and conscious. This time, I choose my direction. I choose the changes.
This time, I have a different plan. Instead of making a goal with no plan to achieve it, and failing, I am choosing a direction and a pathway. I am breaking it down into tiny steps, as per Laozi.
Each day, I take my tiny steps along my journey. Each day I get a few steps closer, and each day it gets a tiny bit easier.
My deliberate, conscious transformation is far from complete, but for the first time in my life, I think, and feel, as if this time I can really do it.
