Behind the Puddle

I could take a picture of the puddle every morning from exactly the same spot. Same chair. Same angle. Same time. And most days, I don’t think the picture would look dramatically different from the one before it.

A few more leaves. A little different light. Maybe more or less water. A visitor in one picture who isn’t there in the next. Nothing particularly remarkable. But if I put a picture from June beside one from today, there would be no question. The landscape has changed.

That’s the strange thing about change. When we are close to it, it can be almost impossible to see.

The leaves don’t all change color overnight. One begins. Then another. A little yellow appears. A little red. A few fall. Then more. Until one day we look outside and realize the view has become something entirely different. There was no single moment when it happened. It was happening every day.

Maybe we are like that too.

I don’t think most of us wake up feeling transformed. We wake up feeling like ourselves. We make coffee. Feed animals. Answer messages. Go to appointments. Do whatever the day asks. Then we do it again tomorrow.

Change rarely feels dramatic from the inside. But every experience leaves something.

A conversation changes the way we think. A loss changes what we value. A relationship changes what we understand about love. A disappointment changes what we’re willing to tolerate. A new limitation changes how we move through the world. An unexpected joy changes what we notice.

Something we survive changes what we know we can carry. One small thing. Then another. Eventually we become someone our earlier selves wouldn’t completely recognize. Not necessarily better. Not worse. Just different. I think we sometimes resist that because we want change to have a clear explanation. What happened to you?

Sometimes there is an answer. Sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes life simply happened. Enough ordinary days accumulated. Enough things were learned. Enough things were lost. Enough things were loved.

And we changed.

Behind the puddle, I have watched that happen to the landscape. But I’ve also watched it happen to me. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have noticed many of the things I notice now. I wouldn’t have known who I was looking for. I wouldn’t have cared quite so much whether the feeders were empty. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that a squirrel, a turtle, a pair of herons, some geese, a few mallards, and a very shallow body of water would become characters in the stories of my life.

The puddle didn’t suddenly become more interesting. I changed enough to see what had always been there. Maybe that’s worth remembering when we look at ourselves and think nothing is happening.

Growth doesn’t always feel like growth. Healing doesn’t always feel like healing. Becoming doesn’t always feel like becoming. Sometimes it just feels like another ordinary Tuesday. Until enough Tuesdays pass. Then one day we look back. And there it is. A different landscape. A different understanding. A different version of ourselves. 

October won’t transform the trees in one afternoon. It doesn’t need to. One leaf at a time is enough. Maybe one ordinary day at a time is enough for us too.