Humans are not built to process change so quickly: The good and the bad.
Our ears pop to protect us from the increase in altitude as our plane lifts its landing gear and soars. Scuba divers stop, hydrate, and rest to reacclimatize after a dive. We do not “blink,” and our babies have become adults, although we like to say as much.
Maybe that’s why spring feels so particularly needed this year: The slow progression from bare branches to sweet cherry blossoms. The gradual opening of giant, candy-colored tulip petals.
We have waited and watched, and our patience is rewarded with something beautiful.
Our minds may trick us into thinking that one day we just wake up and…spring is here.
It’s not true.
Spring is a gradual process of deceptive complexity: A little bit more daylight each day, a little more moisture in the soil, the sun converted into energy, the conditions for reproduction met until something glorious is revealed.
This is how the world works. All of it.
We did not wake up one day to leaders who fill us with shame, to people rewarded for cruelty.
But also:
We will not wake up one day to a country that magically seems to have righted itself. We will not blink our eyes to reveal a new slate of leaders ushering in a return to decency. It is a process.
Change is already happening. Look and you can see it. But we have to be more than witnesses.
We are the sunlight.
We are the moisture in the soil.
In all of us are the conditions for growth that can generate something remarkable.
We are the force for change.
It won’t come the moment we need it, but if we work together, it will come.
When I have doubts, I look at something beautiful.
Liz Gumbinner is a Brooklyn-based writer, award-winning ad agency creative director, and OG mom blogger who was called “funny some of the time” by an enthusiastic anonymous commenter. This was originally posted on her Substack “I’m Walking Here!,” where she covers culture, media, politics, and parenting.
Images courtesy of the author.
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