After recounting to a friend some of the big changes that have gone on in my life over the last six months, including leaving a job, changing cities and moving in with my partner, he responded:
“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”
Which translates as:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
This reminded me of a couple of lines from one of my all-time favourite poems, ‘Hokusai Says’ by Roger Keyes:
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are.
In ‘The Soul’s Code’, James Hillman plays with the “acorn theory”, where he proposes that we are each given, or molded around, a primary image, blueprint, or vocation, and suggests that it is the task of our lives to realize and embody this essential, unique nature, this “soul’s code”. For Hillman, the oak inheres in the acorn, and our life-task is to become the oak that we were always born to be.
He writes:
Even before there are life stories lives display themselves as images… Unpacking the image takes a lifetime. It may be perceived all at once, but understood only slowly.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Given this paradoxical truth, it can sometimes be helpful to stop and to look back over our lives, to survey the terrain, to glimpse the images of our unfolding souls, and to celebrate the profound journey that has been walked so far.
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