How to Change Your Mind, or How to Be Mercurial
I've been told I change my mind too much.
This is an essay about the power of changing your mind.
To do so, all you have to do is follow these steps:
1. Believe (even if only slightly) that something better is possible
2. Give yourself permission
When my daughter was five, we took a cross-country road trip together, from San Francisco all the way to Ohio and back.
We traveled for six weeks.
I spent many hours planning the trip, where we would go, and what we would see.
We all know that if you go on a road trip to the American West, you are supposed to visit Yellowstone National Park.
If you are in Wyoming and don't go to Yellowstone, you will have to explain yourself.
A lot.
Of course, Yellowstone was on our itinerary.
The day we arrived, it was hot July. The night before, we'd slept in our tent. It had rained gently the entire night.
I'd rolled up our muddy tent in our only sleeping sheet, packed it into the car, and driven into Jackson Hole to find a laundry.
That was the easy part.
Trying to find lunch had been exhausting and expensive. Today, I would pay $10 for a grilled cheese and not bat an eye.
But in 2009, it was spendy. Not even any fries!
When we finally escaped the long traffic lines in what I coined "Jackson Hell," we hit the road to Yellowstone.
Five lanes of traffic greeted us at the entry. The wait to pay your $25 entrance fee was over an hour.
Hundreds of vehicles were waiting to drive into the park.
Flashback to five and half years earlier.
I'm waiting in the exam room for the high-risk pregnancy doctor to come in.
I've been referred to him because I've asked too many questions about having a hospital vaginal birth after a cesarean, known as a VBAC.
I do not have a high-risk pregnancy.
Outside, it's snowing.
I know this because I'm standing at the window.
In protest, I refuse to sit on the table with the foot cups.
I wait and wait, angry because I'm waiting so long for an appointment I don't even want, all because I've been labeled 'difficult.'
It's been an hour and 45 minutes.
My feet hurt. I need a snack. I am late to pick up my son.
And then, I realize I'm done.
I'm not waiting anymore.
I'm not having a hospital birth.
I don't know how I will have this baby, but it's not like this. I walk out of the room.
The nurses are huddled at their station. In a shocked tone, one nurse asks, "Where are you going?"
I say, "I'm leaving."
She asks, "Do you want to reschedule?"
"No." The one-word sentence says it all, and we both know it.
"What are you going to do?" she asks.
Walking through the exit door, I call back, "I don't know."
I walk to the parking lot.
Get into my car.
A smile cracks my face despite the seriousness of the moment.
Suddenly, I'm laughing, cracking up with delight.
This is the first moment I've set myself free.
So when I get to that traffic situation in Yellowstone, it's a no-brainer.
I'm not doing this. We're not doing this. Fuck it.
I turn the car around, and we head quickly away. I'll trust the fates to lead our path, and they do.
They lead to a Roadside Madonna, where we pray for love.
To a wolf print, giant in the still-frozen July snow.
To a bookstore full of great kids' books.
To icecream.
To a hot springs where we soak and swim.
We follow backroads, stay off the highways, and avoid tourist destinations.
The rest of our road trip is following our noses to many magickal adventures.
With each choice to trust our knowing, I am returned to myself, to my innocence, and to assured confidence from living guided by symbols and signs instead of shoulds and have-tos.
The baby that emerged and my choice to have a home birth have led the way to change my mind at many life junctures.
I left a marriage.
Left a sexual orientation and gender identity.
Found a new faith.
Developed new kinds of community based on shared power and consensus.
Changing my mind has become my art form.
It is the basis of my liberatory practice and the root of all now-ness.
I will not be confined by previous decisions made with access to different information.
I trust the wisdom of this moment and that even if the decision doesn't stick, I will have no regrets.
I am not afraid of my future self finding fault with the choices of the past. As I wrote in my journal after driving away from Yellowstone: "I've never regretted a hastily made decision that goes against conventional thinking."
I kept a blog during our road trip. Ironically, while almost all of the feedback I received was wildly supportive and curious, my decision to drive away from Yellowstone incurred wrath and ire.
I had "missed the opportunity of a lifetime," said one reader.
Another reflected that I was no better than all the other tourists, so I should have joined them and not denied my daughter the opportunity.
Nay-sayers who do not have the power of the mercurial will not understand these decisions that make no sense on the surface.
But in their underbelly rests a deep power: mystery.
You can always choose what is behind the still-closed Door #3, and trust your capacity to be with whatever it is, even if it is a rubber chicken.
The gifts of mercuriality
Flow state
Follow your nose
What is alive
Not having to know before you know
Getting to iterate
Getting more information
Testing things out without being committed
Being responsive to the moment and the need
Being unstuck
Being free
The capacity to redefine and reidentify, to rebrand
Being available for surprise