The Hard Truth about Transformation

On April 19, 2011 our home was stuck by a tornado. It toppled six of the lovely and enormous 100 year oak trees that surrounded our house. It demolished our garage, blew the roof of our barn and totally destroyed the deep woods behind our house. In general, it was a gargantuan mess of debris and fallen trees and branches.

Three years later, the beauty has reemerged. Our home is rebuilt, our yard is grass and not weeds, younger trees replace the ancient ones, the rubble is removed. This spring, as tulips bloomed, I felt as if we had finally “made it”.

And I was also reminded of a hard, cold truth about transformation – that it takes time. And not just time alone. It takes time and work and focus and help from others and staying with it. Bit by bit, step by step – making progress in waves of tiny and then bigger steps until finally you look up one day and things are fundamentally changed.

No matter how deeply we know this truth, we continue to long for a different way. We want the quick fix, the instant make-over, the magic pill. My Purdue students want a quick answer to what they should do with their lives. We are inundated with ads for diet supplements that tout they will cause you to lose weight without eating less or exercising more. I grow weary of projects that take months instead of weeks, years instead of months. Potential clients call with big problems and want a three hour workshop as the solution.

At the same time, when we stay with things, doing the work bit by bit, step by step, we look up one day and are startled at the progress we’ve made. We are in a career that we love. We are stronger and healthier after all that exercise and healthy eating. The project is not a project anymore, but is just the “way we do things around here”.   Old problems are resolved – and we are faced with a crop of new ones.  And it has been the process of incremental actions, day in and day out, over time that is magic. It is not the waving of the wand, the instant fix – but the plodding, doing of the work over time that creates real and lasting transformation.

So plod on. Continue to do the work. Even though at times it seems to take too long, to be too hard, to feel as if progress is elusive. And then bask in the wonderment that will occur – sometime in the future – when you look up and realize that the work is done, the transformation complete.