Why take the journey?

Often it is easiest to stay put. It is easiest to continue to live a life that we know, and pad through to further accomplishments that keep us as we are. Is this good? Is this bad? Depends on the circumstances of your life. Only you know - which makes the equation that much more precarious to balance.

In Stephen Buhner's The Secret Teachings of Plants, he writes about changes:

For any living system very close to the phase transition between a synchronized and nonsynchronized state, a small peturbing signal produces a very large effect, moving the system in and out of synchrony at a regular rate. But every time the system reorders, it is in a new state of equilibrium. The resulting self-organization and emergent behaviors are different from those that went before. The novetly in living systems arises at points of instability, at bifurcation points. Instabilities are indespensable sources of biological innovation. [46]

What signals of reorganization are you receivng?

I have found that the call for change can be ignored - to a point. Once this pinnacle point is reached (the first of infinite) - you have reached critical mass and change must occur. One can chose to evolve or ride the waves of a system that collapse and reorganize upon itself in dis-ease, until the proper space is acquired for expansion.

This was the ringing I heard, in my ears, as I walked this very hallway, into my classroom. Each day I taught - through the veils of English literature - to follow the call of one's own heart, the notorious advice of Joseph Campbell to "Follow Your Bliss." What happens when the teacher realizes that the very advice she serves needs to be followed? What happens when the one who needs to learn is one's self?

The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff finger
sat the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
© Mary Oliver. Online Source

I packed my bags and bought a one way ticket to Kaua'i.