An Epiphany about Epiphanies

Change is easy to fear. Once you've hit a solid routine, a formula, why would you try to re-arrange it, just for the sake of being "different"? I mean, that's far too hipster. I've worn sweatpants and eaten soup for the past week. No complaints here.

But then, flipping through that book of inspirational quotes that lays in the back of my bookshelf, I see "be the change you want to see in the world." The word "growth" flashes at me from every page. Personal growth. Mental growth. Spiritual growth. And the thing about our society, is that we tend to see growth like this:

We want things to be flashy, to be noticeable. Why go a shade more brunette when you could go 12 shades darker (true story)? The small progressions seem monotonous. And so, what do we do when we think our "change timeline" isn't up to snuff? We throw caution to the wind and spend our tax refunds on ashram life.

Okay, that's what I do. Apparently I've decided to skip the weekend vacation step and shoot straight for the stars.

I've always romanticized external changes as an aid for internal discovery. And while being at Shoshoni was a nice realization that I don't totally hate hiking and that collecting thoughts on a mountain is way more rad (yeah, I said it) than hemming and hawing in my room, I never woke up one day, looked out at the Rocky Mountains and thought, "I am a hare krishna, hear me roar chant!" It seemed I was going through the motions of Ashram life without soaking in that "internal glow" that Shoshoni-ites are promised. It seemed a failed trip, that I was just doomed to be a material girl in a material world, and that getting hit over the head with a Ganesh statue wouldn't do any good.

Let me interrupt this blog with a general PSA: Don't hit anyone over the head with a Ganesh statue. Those tusks are rather pointy; it's quite an unpleasant experience.

I'd always concluded that oh well, guess I'm not meant for the ashram life, I wasn't doing it right, oh well, back to being a chameleon elsewhere, maybe I'll get that life changing epiphany in France.

It's a well known fact that those who eat baguettes and snarl at Americans speed up the epiphan-izing process.

And then I came across this line in Dick Davis' poem, Iran 20 Years Ago: 
 "As if that no epiphany, precisely/were the epiphany? As Hafez has it,/To know, you must have gone along that way;/I know they changed my life forever but/I know too that I could not tell myself--/Much less another--what it was I saw/Or learnt, or brought back from those aimless hours." 

Part of self discovery is, yes, to realize that we're always changing--but not always at a speed we can notice. But there is a certain beauty in Davis' lack of epiphany, as he realizes that his core self is not affected by his environment. He can appreciate the beauty of his surroundings without having to actively work on himself. We don't have to expect anything from mountains, or oceans--they are not direct mirrors of ourselves. Just as Davis learned a lot about Iranian culture without losing himself, I learned about Hindu traditions and ashram lifestyle.

Our reliance on our surroundings to change us may be romantic. It's poetic. But hey, Dick Davis was a widely celebrated poet, and his reality is that "sure, this change in scenery is nice, but I'm still me." Although said a little more beautifully.

Sometimes, we can just appreciate the beauty of difference without waiting for the difference to reflect upon us.

Namaste.