Committing to our own evolution

Or, chronic self-annihilation as a value

I was recently tumbling happily down a Substack rabbit hole when I stumbled on a phrase whose origins I cannot recall that stopped me in my tracks: I am committed to my own evolution.

In theory I believe this is something that most of us can get on board with — surely we all understand that change is inevitable, growth is important, and our own countless transformations tend to be a necessary result of coming into contact with the entirety of life, shaping us in slight and substantial ways as we wind our way through the jagged and gentle corners of time and experience. We evolve, we do it whether we mean to or not. We know this.

But in practice, this often is not so simple. We seek facets of change almost constantly — longing for The Change that we are sure will at last allow us to start living, The Change that will complete us, bring us peace or set us free. We desire particular pieces of change so much that it dulls the present, and our fixation on a rainbow colored future perpetually sucks the vibrancy out of now. We want something to change, always.

Sometimes The Change we dream and wish and pray for does arrive, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we get a different change instead, one we didn't want, one we didn’t see coming, one we didn’t even see happening at all until we look around one day and everything is different.

No matter what type of change we are currently being offered, the beautiful and infuriating fact that we revere and fear in equal measure is the way in which change is sure to bloom and bleed into every last corner of our life, affecting hidden pockets and long-standing familiar features alike.

And here, as transformations in our being or in our environments begin to shift pieces of ourselves that we once imagined were immutable, we are met with another series of struggle and dissatisfaction — for which we are often entirely surprised by and unprepared for.

We somehow begin to hold who we once were or who we could be in the future in higher esteem than who we are now. We punish ourselves for no longer being adept at skills we once had mastered. We shame ourselves for not feeling connected to labels and goals we once wore with pride and purpose. We panic as identities we clung to like life rafts get ripped from our grip by the powerful tides of change, morphing the landscapes that we used to reign confidently into foreign lands for which we feel we don’t even have a map.