microevolution

In my house growing up, we talked a lot about the microevolution of the human psyche.


Fancy way of saying, people don't change.

I remember always disagreeing with Larry.  Fighting hard against this seemingly fatalistic mentality.  I so resented it, I chose a profession, which banks on the opposite.

I will spend my life requiring people to change.  My profession will require me to believe people even can.  Believe the work I have done, do, and will do is not futile or in vain.

As I get older, I understand this statement more and more.  I see its truth more in the faces of the grown men in my life than anyone.  It helps me make my decisions.  It has helped me walk away.

One day it may even help me stay.

Today it has helped me recover my hope.

Because this theory, this theory applies to me too.

This somewhat pessimistic, but realistic theory, explains my resilience.  When applied to my life, it explains my ability to bounce back.  It explains my hope.

I have changed.  The shape of my body.  The capacity of my lungs.  The length of my hair.

My very outlook on life has changed dramatically.

My level of education, my wisdom, my story.  Everything.  Everything has changed.

Yet when I look in the mirror, when I sit down here to put words to paper, when I kneel down to talk to a child, I am the same woman.  Dare I say, just better?

At my deepest, I am the same little girl in the hospital bed.  The same young woman in Africa.  The same older woman in Haiti.  The same as I was the first day of college.  The same as the day he first said I love you.

I just know more.  I am wiser.  More mature.  More experienced.  

I kicked my horrible social anxiety.  But in lonely moments, driving to get an oil change can incite a minor panic attack.

I learned to be extroverted.  How to interact with people.  How to survive a party or a bar.  But on bad days, I still never open my mouth in a crowded room.

There are days when I don't talk to Him.  When I don't open His word.  And until recently, I hadn't stepped foot in His so-called "house" in half a year.

And yet, because I am His child, I can walk down the side walk and find myself communing with Him.

Being literally knocked off my feet by His breath -- come as wind.

As quickly as it left, however, hope is here.  The courage and strength to face tomorrow have risen up and bolstered me.  Because that is who I am.

I have evolved on a micro level.  Significant, important, life-altering changes.  The kind of change I want to see in my clients, in my children.  Changes, which can be the difference between dying of an overdose and landing the job.

Not fatalistic.

Realistic.

And ironic.  Because, we're really not in the business of changing people at all anyway.

That's not our job.

No.  My job, my life's calling, is to look at a man.  A woman.  A child.  And see who it is they are at their core.

And fight for it.