seismic changes in energy
notes on transformation
I was talking to a friend on a long drive recently, trying to explain how the world seemed to be at a moment of seismic transformation, one I couldn’t quite articulate outside of a sense of energy shifting. She felt the same.
The entire sense of transformation may be utterly personal. My career is at a moment of transformation as it has been every 3-5 years for the near entirety of my life I have spent to become a physician… but this energy change feels unrelated.
Some of it may be the reality of climate change, which has been relentlessly declaring itself. The past week alone included the earthquake in Morocco, flooding in Libya, and a report from The New York Times on the depletion of ground water in the United States. The world itself is physically undergoing radical transformation.
The other part may be witnessing many friends enter new phases of their lives and an understanding that I, too, will follow them, if not now, then soon.
This week, I visited a friend to welcome her new baby. Around the same time, The Cut published an essay about female friendship not surviving motherhood when only one friend becomes a mother and the other remains childless. The essay seemed to pat itself on the back, self assured in recognizing some profound difference in the ways these women live and their inability to maintain a relationship. To me, the commentary felt hollow. The author, Allison Davis, is resentful and honestly divulges she disengages from her friends who have become parents. Her demeanor is neither empathetic nor self-aware. Perhaps the only redeeming part of the piece is at the end, from Samin Nosrat, who says, “my instinct is, I’m going to figure out how to come to you” and “I don’t resent having to do a different kind of labor.”
“my instinct is, I’m going to figure out how to come to you” and “I don’t resent having to do a different kind of labor.”
Isn’t that the most important determination of what relationships survive? If both people are willing to do the work? As I think about friendships that have stood the test of time and those that haven’t even weathered minor storms without crumbling, I am certain that this is really what matters at its most simple and significant core—will you choose only the labor that is easy? Or will you transform?
The answer isn’t always the same on any given day or with any given friend, but certainly is a testament to the longevity.
On Labor Day, I spent the day organizing my closet in one of my semiannual inventories. I tried on clothes that survived many moves from Chicago to North Carolina to DC because they felt integral to some representation of myself. This time I was surprised by how they no longer seemed to reflect the person I had become. In the last decade, my personhood had been quietly shifting, gradually and deliberately. I was always aware I was not the woman I had been five or even ten years ago, but it felt very abrupt to have it manifested in front of the mirror.
Something about this moment in time feels volatile in an anticipatory way. If anything, apprehensive, but almost hopeful. I don’t ascribe to astrological superstitions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something amiss or aligned in the stars. It is tenuous and may exist only in the imagination, but does that make it any less real?
-M
P.S. Please consider making donations for relief in Morocco and Libya here and here.
P.P.S. I think I’m moving publishing day to Sunday to better fit my schedule. This note is late Sunday night (or very early on Monday I suppose), but I’ve been mulling it over all day. xx