Ad Infinitum
When every step is a first step, we are always changing.
Ad infinitum is a phrase seldom used, but much loved by some.
Most mathematicians and a few poets, namely Jonathan Swift and Lewis Fry Richardson successfully dance with the Latin words meaning “to” & “unto” and “unbound” & “unlimited.”
I would count myself as one of those some, and among the poets who dance in between the five vowels and six consonants that lead to forevermore. I will leave the calculations to the mathematicians however, as that seems the safer choice for a man who works much more with words, and far less with equations.
And still, I have been sitting with this phrase lately as I think about the amount of change we humans are going through each and every day. Is it increasing? Are we stabilizing? Or maybe backsliding? It looks different, depending on where you are standing. And where you are looking. How does it look to you? How does it feel?
Just this week I had a variety of conversations with people all going through major change…life-changing change. With each share, each listen, each delving I was humbly left to wonder:
Does change sustain us or does change contain us?
This has long been a debate, dating back to the earliest mutterings of the stoics and philosophers. And while our world has shifted, accelerated and complicated, one thing remains universal.
The more we try and grasp it and tighten our grip on it, change becomes more elusive, slippery, evasive and even tricky.
Pay attention next time you find yourself gripping, grasping and attempting to subjugate the bedfellow of change…uncertainty. And remember this, the truest antidote to uncertainty is community. The gathering of voices empowers you with choices. You don’t have to go through change alone. Reach out. The journey everward is better accompanied anyway.
Gathering of Voices
What is consciousness but a gathering of voices
Unsolicited, unencumbered, unthoughtful
Don't seek external validation, look inside
Reach inward and create clarity beside
Fear is a wave to evanesce
Less propagation the further it spans
And then it is the horizon
Where the sun kisses your forehead
But why challenge yourself with something
When we are are always changing
When every step is a first step
In a universe that is shaping us outward