Transitions
By Jim Koury
After a brief hiatus from writing for the Ringside Report due to my dad’s death on December 23rd, I am back at it! Last night, while awaiting the arrival of the New Year 2024, I pondered what to write about this week. Nothing struck me, so I went to bed and let universal energy take care of a topic. As expected, I awakened with the concept of “transitions” in my head. Thus, the title of the first article for the week is “Transitions.”
Life is full of transitions. Some can be very difficult, such as the death of a loved one, while others are fun and easy to cope with. We wish all our life’s transitions could be of the latter type. Sadly, as we all know, that is not the case. Some transitions in life can be excruciatingly painful. However, these painful transitions test our resolve to forge ahead and learn new lessons, within a context other than what we were used to. Lessons come from struggle and overcoming. Without these, we tend to stagnate and not grow, as we remain in our comfort zones because it is much easier to do.
When I think of a comfort zone, I remember a joke someone told me years ago about a bloodhound sitting on a porch with its master. A stranger comes to the porch with car trouble and asks to use the phone. After calling who the stranger needed to call, he chatted with the man who owned the dog. Every once in a while, the dog would lift its head, howl, and then lay back down. After repeatedly doing so, the stranger asked its owner what was wrong with him. The master of the dog replied that he was sitting on a nail, but it did not hurt enough to move.
This story, to me, epitomizes what being in a comfort zone is like. It hurts somewhat; we want to get out of the rut of the zone, but it all does not quite hurt enough to prompt us to action and change the situation. We tend to bitch and complain but stay where we are, as it is much easier than doing something differently. Transitions get us out of these moments of boredom and the ensuing anxiety. We need to get to the point where we get off our nails, move to another spot, decide a transition is necessary, embrace it, and then do the work needed to achieve the desired end.
Sadly, deciding and doing the work to change our situation sometimes takes a while. Instead, we often veer off in a different direction and find ourselves on a dark path full of uncertainty and risks. We aimlessly wander, or it seems that way anyway, bouncing off the walls like a pinball in a machine. Along the darkened path, we also make decisions under duress because we lose sight of what is important to us. Consequences come with any decision we make, and unfortunately, any decision can delay our arrival or cause unnecessary personal consternation and impede our movement toward our goals. The silver lining is that our destiny is for greatness, whether we realize it or not. We can begin anew and decide to reset ourselves, right our ship, and set sail toward calmer ports and a life that reflects our true inner essence, as the dark path is not all bad.
While challenging, frustrating, and very stressful, the dark path can allow us to discover more things about ourselves than we could have ever imagined. Any personal reinvention wrought upon us by life’s transitions also involves meandering through the veiled inner depths of our consciousness, which can be a very isolating and lonely experience. Still, it is necessary, as answers and direction to moving forward hide in this frustrating sphere within us. I am sure you have heard the quote by Napolean Hill, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
Even though we may be amid turmoil, strife, and confusion, we can still be open to experimenting with various traditional and less conventional opportunities and probably some things that do not conform to society’s false sense of what is correct and appropriate. But each person’s journey is unique, and that is all that matters. What others think of that journey is entirely irrelevant.
While many find it hard to believe, there is always some degree of divine intervention at play in our lives. Some do not realize it, as their minds are not open to the possibility of such an intangible concept. Our minds fail to acknowledge the possibility because of the paradigms of thought we learned as children and young adults. The Roman Catholicism and the Christian point of view engrained in me have been set aside and replaced with a more personalized spiritual essence with a connection to universal power instead of an artificial deity meant to control people and subjugate them to a life influenced by someone else’s perception and paradigms of thought.
As I mentioned in prior articles, I broke free from that constrictive and tunnel-vision view of spirituality long ago and have never looked back or regretted it. The transitions we face become much easier to deal with once the mind is open to the possibilities, free from constrictive and archaic belief systems and what others think we should do. We begin to veer off the dark path onto the more direct one to traverse instead. Both paths will eventually get us where we need and want to be. However, why choose the harder and much more difficult one? The decision not to is much easier said than done.
While experiencing our journeys, we must maintain our grit and confidence. Not to sound cliché, but Winston Churchill’s advice to a graduating class at his alma mater, Harrow, rings so true and one which we must hold close to our hearts at all costs despite the trials and tribulations facing us and the degree of severity of the transitions life brings us. Churchill’s speech was, “‘Young men, never give up. Never give up! Never give up!! Never, never, never-never-never-never!'” I say to everyone reading this, NEVER GIVE UP. Keep forging ahead, and embrace all the transition moments life may throw you! Make the best of them, as they will mold and shape you into the person you need to be to realize the greatness instilled in all of us at birth.
Jim is the author of two books, Unredacted, and Soul Journey, and also publishes an online publication, Diversity Rules Magazine. He resides in Upstate New York in the city where he was born, with his dog Lina and cat Critter.