The Length of Change

it's late February in Ontario. The temperatures are just starting to creep above freezing and it's raining instead of snowing. The snow is beginning to melt and the sidewalks are slushy and filled with puddles. I saw my first flock of geese flying around yesterday and a friend of a friend said they saw a few robins. Everyone was very excited about that. Robins! If you look very carefully at some trees, you can see the tiniest of buds. It feels like spring is just a breathe away. But hold up, there's still snow on the ground, the temperature will dip again next week, and we're a full two months away from consistent nice weather. I'm in my "learning from nature" phase, and the thing I'm learning as I pay attention is - change takes a long time. You don't just wake up and it's warm and the trees are blooming. It happens slowly, over several months. You can feel it just beginning now. It's easy to forget that if you're not paying attention; to despair and feel that spring will never come. Maybe not every day, but certainly every week, things shift just a little. I feel like that in my life. I finished an improv class this week and my lesson was learning how to be still. My default is always to throw eneregy at everything, yammer on, shimmy around, to be a big character, but there's value in waiting, in listening, in being quiet enough to hear where the scene is going, what your improv partner is giving you. So I shifted. I'm slowly moving toward my new improv self. I'm also learning that it's ok to be scared when opportunities arrive, but not to let the fear stop you; to move forward anyway. Maybe trees feel that too, or baby plants. Scary out there; who knows what will happen? But change is inexorable, and like the dry flowers in my yard, we're all in the season of becomming something new. By May, none of us will look the same. Here's to the slow motion of change, to our new flowers, skills, opportunities, and growth that are simmering slowly under the snow.