E-Kantipur

‘Another characteristic of human nature—perhaps the one that makes us the most human—is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature,” M. Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Travelled. His writing focuses on ways we can face our difficulties, suffer through changes and transform ourselves to have a higher level of understanding. Peck highlights change and transformation as a positive aspect of human nature. I miss the autumn leaves changing colour in the US: nature’s way of changing and transforming itself. The subtle differences that can be seen day-to-day in the leaves and on the trees are witness to the magic tricks nature performs. Do the leaves realise they are changing, transforming before our very eyes? Are they suffering through these changes? Are they attempting and failing to suppress their colour change? Or is it an open, welcome annual leaf change?

I don’t like change and I don’t like it when things seemingly change without my awareness or control. But this autumn, despite not being able to see the leaves change colour and fall from the very branch they were born from, I have ‘done the unnatural’ and subsequently changed. Change is one of the things humans fear most. We love things that we know and are unchangeable: we write about what we know, we eat comfort food, there are films that we watch over and over, we have favourite bands and best friends who know us better than anyone. We dislike it when rules or menus change, and we want our children to remain children forever. But this unchanging does not bring about transformation. We cannot resist change if we want “to transcend and hence transform our own nature”. We cannot suppress the urge and human tendency to change. A synonym of change is transform.

I have said before that we need to embrace each and every day as we do not get another try with this life, and similarly I believe that we need to embrace these transformations that we suffer (willingly or unwillingly) through. Working with teenagers, I get to see the joys of adolescent transformation. They may be unaware of some of the subtle things that change inside them, but mostly they are accepting of these teenage transformations—getting a deeper voice, being taken more seriously by their elders, or growing taller. These works of art, these mouldable and changeable young adults, relish in the transformation of their lives into adulthood. They may believe they are suffering more greatly than they really are throughout this process, but they still welcome it. We, as adults, stunt this transformative process and we get stuck in our own ways. We resist the natural or unnatural transformations that occur in adulthood instead of welcoming them. What happens between adolescence and adulthood that suppresses our desire and need and openness for transformation?

Suppression is a dangerous word: to subdue, to keep from being revealed, to inhibit the expression of, to put an end to forcibly, to prohibit the activities of. This is not to say that teenagers do not inhibit their expressive qualities or keep things from being revealed, but they do hold ownership over their own mind and bodily transformations. I have watched the shyest teenagers blossom into confident young adults. Adults suppress anger and other emotions. We prohibit the activity of change; we need to, as Peck says, ‘do the unnatural’, which means not suppressing any feelings, acting completely the opposite of how we normally would and opening our hearts to our own truths. If we are suppressing something, we are stagnant; we are not capable of change. When we open our hearts, change is possible. We can transform the path of our lives, the current anxieties and the issues that we are facing.

I have transformed my own nature this autumn. I have given up my propensity towards stagnancy and suppression of my truth. I have eliminated the negativity in my life, and I have embraced the opportunities that the universe has presented to me. I have watched the teenagers I work with blossom and grow and change, and I have followed their lead. And despite not being in the US this autumn, my own leaves have changed colours. I have suffered through these changes, but still transcended and transformed giving a perfect tribute to the wonderful autumn leaves. It is through this suffering and that we learn as M. Scott Peck says, “it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers” and truly embrace the unnatural and transform.

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