There are certain words that bother me; they just seem lazy. One of them is the oft-used “reinvention.” My good friend, the brilliant Tamsen Fadal (and if you don’t follow her on Instagram, you should), has recently pointed out how “reinvention” infers that whatever was happening before was somehow wrong. It is similar to how one uses the word pivot in business: you do it because the previous stuff wasn’t working. This also implies a certain phase, as in: what was ice is now water. I am not so sure about any of this. I rather like the word “evolve,” but even it is not quite right. Life is about change and, to a certain extent, struggle. It is growth. I have heard we need to adopt a growth mindset; we have no choice. This is life.
My inclination is always to push against labels; again, I find them lazy. My view is that we are on a continuum, and we don’t really have an option to push the pause button. The cells in our arm muscles are replaced every 90 days, whether we choose or not. The 4-year-old becomes the 5-year-old; it just happens. The idea that there is some stop-action liminal phase in midlife may be true to the extent that some of us feel it; however, in actuality, we are in constant change, most of which we are not aware of. Reinvention, if viewed kindly, is perhaps simply a realization; it may be the moment of action of something that has been going on under the surface for some time. It is not really the creation of something completely new; change is happening continually. It could be just a label we choose to put on our realization of the changes. The visual of this would be a relatively linear line of our actual progress and a jagged one of the perceived reality. The distortion is that we often see ourselves as either ahead or behind of where we really are.
Of course, there are sudden life-changing events: loss of a loved one, disease, employment disruption. These are massively impactful in one way, but in another way, they are like a tug boat on an ocean liner: real deflection only happens over a period of time. In my own experience, even these massive life events don’t seem to really move the needle in the moment; it takes time. Time, like food, needs moments of rest and digestion, during which the big stuff happens under the surface. Our difficulties come from either denying these subsurface rumblings or trying to change immediately, which can come out more like cosplay. Life moves forward, slowly; like it or not. Every day, we are different while being mostly the same. Although I am not always happy with who I currently am, the alternative is not to be at all, which doesn’t sound so good. Life is so wonderful, and more so when we do it together.
Onward and upward,
David
