The Weight Shift of Unwanted Changes

Change brings us life transitions. And these are difficult. Moving out of pandemic isolation to opening is a transitional experience. Losing a loved one is a transitional force in life. We plant our feet firmly upon a life choice, an occupation, a relationship, and then aging, health issues, or death strike. New personal needs erupt, new challenges explode, demanding realignment of our efforts and focus. Life’s footing has shifted, and we feel off-balance.

Jesus once spoke of building one’s house on sand or on rock, referring to the ever-shifting nature of sand that makes for an infirm foundation. Much of what we build upon in life, that upon which we place our weight as seemingly permanent, will shift and give way over time. Living is a continual effort to find firm footing.

Building one’s life on rock, finding firm footing, is an inward quality. It is the practice of finding balance amidst the myriad of changes that occur – by seeking clarity to discern, and courage to participate through the shifts in life that we encounter. Firm-footedness comes as we embrace the movement from yang to yin that continually courses through our lifetimes.

Permanence is an illusion. All aspects of life have a yin–yang nature that flows from sunny side to shadow side and back. Real permanence comes from a stable constancy within; a perspective of balance that recognizes and moves through the continual impermanency of life.

Transitions come; needs arise in a swelling current to move on. We experience the unsettled movement beneath our stance. With an intentional yielding towards balance, we move with and into the shift, finding again our footing over time as we move on with determined purpose, completing the weight shift into our next stance.

T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) teaches this: the firmest footing rests within. We maneuver with trained confidence these unsettled shifts of the sand-nature of change. We long to move towards rebalancing. Constancy is found as we recognize and take our stance within the push and pull as life presents itself; within the yin and yang at play all around us and within us. Firmer footing is, after all, an inward inclination of our core towards balance even in an unsettling and shifting landscape.