Growth Spurt

 I think I'm having a growth spurt.  Nope, I don't think I'm ever going to be any taller and I sure hope my feet don't get bigger!  But I seem to be growing nonetheless and it's a good thing.

Recently, a new friend asked me if there was anything I would change about myself if I could.  It was a basic, hypothetical, get to know you question.  I pondered the question for a while, then to my own surprise, answered "nothing".  There is nothing I would change about myself.  Wait. What?

In the past, I might have complained about being disorganized or wanting better sleep.  I probably would have said that I need to lose weight or that I've always thought my brown eyes were boring.  I guarantee that like most people, I could have come up with something that annoyed, aggravated or otherwise made me unhappy about myself.  Let's be honest. I probably would have come up with several things.

More surprising than my answer to this question was the realization that I totally meant it.  This is not arrogance.  Nor does it mean that there is no room for improvement.  I truly believe that if you stop growing, you're dead.  Maybe not physically dead but most definitely emotionally or spiritually no longer with us.  There is always space to do better, learn more and understand things in a different way.  I am no exception.

But this disinterest in changing myself was something new.  It was like an acknowledgement that the version of me that was existing in this moment was the perfect version of me for this moment. Will I change?  I imagine I will.  Am I even now a different but also perfect version of myself in this particular moment?

 Life is strange.  Mine has felt particularly strange to me for the last several years.  Sometimes it feel as if past versions of myself bear very little resemblance to me now although I am simultaneously, at my core fundamentally the same person I've been since I was five years old.  this both makes perfect sense to me and no sense whatsoever!

The last year has been tough for lots of people in lots of ways.  Me too.  I've been working hard to practice self care and radical self love as a way of dealing with all the issues that arose from life in the middle of a global pandemic.  But of course, the journey began long before that.  I have been working for over half a century on getting comfortable in my own skin.  

It also occurred to me that wishing things were different is an exercise in futility.  Honestly, if there's something you want to change, then go change it.  If it's something you can't change, like your height or your shoe size, then why waste the energy pining for something that's not doable?  Sometime we have an attack of the "if onlys".  I've been there myself but the "if onlys" are an energy suck. If you can change it and you want to change it, then change it.  If you can't or you don't, then accept it and move on.