Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah 43:18-19
Something new is coming, and it’s here. My first impulse is to grab the new thing and wrestle it into the forms of the old things: processes, belief systems, expectations, patterns of behavior… but the new thing was not made to fit into the old things. When we subject the new thing to the form of those old things, we kill it.
Let’s talk about the wilderness. This is a scary place, and we deal with our fear by trying to impose our structures and standards and institutions on it, but we’re being told to forget those things – to leave them behind.
Why?
Because the standards we’re used to operating by don’t and can’t apply here – it’s the wilderness.
Because we can’t have the new if we won’t let go of the old.
We don’t get to have it both ways. We can’t control it.
Moving into the new requires something of us: it requires that we accept it on its own terms, not ours. It requires curiosity. It requires commitment. So if we want to move into the new, and we find ourselves about to interact with it out of our old mindsets, that’s a red flag. Can we notice what we’re doing? Can we pause, and choose to not subject the new that’s in front of us to the old inside us? Can we do that even though the old is fighting for its life, for the way things used to be?
The new thing is here, and we can’t stop it… but we can stop ourselves. The choice is between the comfort, the complacency, the cramped cage of the familiar, and the awkwardness, the unpredictability, and the dangerous, glorious adventure of growth.
Which do you want?