I once read “Change happens in an environment of love.” And I am told recently by a body worker who uses long holds in her work; “The holding is where the healing happens.”

This is so not how we often go about being with and handling change. Too often we go into change in our lives as if we are going into battle. We gear up. We resist. We fight. We complain. We are critical. We believe we are not doing it right. Or enough. We need another way. The pull yourself up by your bootstraps at any cost is just not cutting it these days. It no longer fits. We need a more mature version of what it means to be with shifting times.

So here it is. What if every luminary who has ever spoken had it right? By that I mean, what if it really is about love and compassion and forgiveness? Not as some lofty concept that sounds good on paper or meant only for the really holy ones. Not as some abstract ideal that gets held up as something to aim for but that is really not that practical in the day to day. What if it is about softening, loosening the grip, and letting go straight in the midst of what usually sends us into bunker mentality? What if it is about slowing down and doing less while the warning bells are sounding?

We are entering into a great shift. A time that is revealing what we often do not want to admit; there are no certainties and the ground beneath us is not as solid as we need it to be. We have two choices. We can enter this change as we always have, or we can try something new. Conventional thinking would say we must all brace ourselves for what is coming. It would say hunker down or get ready to fight. But what if it is neither? What if this was our chance for real, lasting and life-affirming collective change? What if a long hold in soft arms in an environment of love is exactly what we all need in the years to come? What if this is precisely what we need to do for ourselves and others? Even the ones we disagree with, or are afraid of.