When a lobster outgrows its shell, it wedges itself between two rocks and moves around until the old shell cracks and breaks loose, freeing the new shell and uncovering a bigger body. When a snake grows beyond the limits of its container, the skin sheds and leaves a translucent memory of what it was before the transition of growth. When a baby is born, new lungs are introduced to air, cries fill the room. The mother’s body is transformed, holding both pain and joy with both hands.

Change and transformation is a baseline for existing and yet somehow, we are always surprised when it is noisy, uncomfortable, even painful. In order to get through it without compartmentalizing, it helps to learn how to hold the reality of grief and suffering in one hand, and joy and excitement in the other, and build forward. Systems that survive are systems that can experience the noise of evolution while simultaneously updating what no longer fits current standards of operation. People are scraping their knuckles changing out parts and shouting expletives at frustrations, yet they persist and the machine serves another generation.

We’re taught so little about things like navigating the process of change yet it’s all around us all the time. Change isn’t a noun, it’s an action. Whenever we hear that people fear change, its likely a fear of the familiar being completely replaced, the process, and untrustworthy outcomes. However, we talk about change as one thing, one singular event outcome, one category. There may be a spark, a catalyst to the change process starting and that might be an event. Something happened first that eventually led to the Great Depression, and it was a long uncomfortable experience to live through for many. Those among the masses that fared the best helped each other through the change while maintaining hope that the new standards of living would be better even if they couldn’t see it right then.

While I was contemplating lobsters, and growth, and as Midwest comedian Charlie Berens might say, to live a life where you just “keep ‘er movin'”, my friend John shared a beautiful piece of writing with me from writer Becca Rothfeld.

“All Things Are Too Small”

“All things are too small,” begins a poem by the thirteenth-century Dutch mystic Hadewijch of Brabant. She goes on – “to hold me” – but she did not have to. All things are too small, not just to hold me, but to hold anything. Cups are too small, which is why they demand such relentless refilling. Bodies are too small to encompass more than a sole inhabitant, except in the rare cases of mysticism or possession (or the more familiar but perhaps no less astounding case of pregnancy). Books can be big – most of the best ones are – yet even the most encyclopedic affairs are too small to encompass the whole of the world’s wild machinery. Moby-Dick can’t reach its arms around a whale – although Melville aims, as James Wood writes, to touch every last word. I once saw a man in a restaurant finish his pasta, order the same dish again, then order and finish it a third time. His was the sanest response to his predicament, but he wouldn’t have had to grasp at such exorbitance if any plate available were big enough.”

I stopped here for a moment. All things are too small … to hold me. Have you ever felt like that? A house feeling too tight regardless of square footage. Restricted breathing. Dreams that aren’t allowed to expand. A role at your job becomes too small. A system built to suppress. Is this how the lobster feels?

I re-read it a few times. An interesting perspective on how “too small” can feel in everyday life. The glass isn’t half-full or half-empty, it’s not big enough. This is new. The lobsters and snakes know about this. Maybe this is the catalyst creation point of the new. The feeling that in order to regain homeostasis within your system, change is uncomfortably necessary and may have to be voluntary.

The transition from “too small to hold me” to a more adequate place leaves you feeling exposed. Like a hermit crab moving out of a smaller shell into a bigger one. That moment in between is vulnerable. That’s when humans look and wonder what in creation is going on (if they didn’t already know this hermit crab walk of shame was a thing that naturally happens). Vulnerability is uncomfortable. The brain perceives emotional pain the same way it perceives physical pain. Someone can feel physically unwell as a result of emotional stress. Change could be considered a wild rollercoaster ride of emotion whether it be adjusting to living somewhere new, starting a new school or job, or even just experiencing unexpected life change. Therefore, if change can be emotional and when emotion registers on some level as pain; What happens when we’re also hardwired to address pain immediately and try to make it stop?

How many times have we stopped progress throughout human history probably for no other reason than it was uncomfortable? How many times have you stopped progress in your own life because things were uncomfortable? I think I did at least twice last week. What if we keep going even though it doesn’t make total sense yet?

My great-grandmother immigrated to the United States from Slovakia. She entered through Ellis Island. I had a chance to visit the island while on a trip with my friend Sam. Walking through the halls over the same tiles my great-grandmother and millions of others had walked, felt like walking through a tender spot. Not the kind that comes from violence or mishap, but the kind that comes from vulnerable growth. The space felt chaotic and calmly expansive at the same time.

My great-grandma lost some of her baggage and finished the journey to Pennsylvania in house shoes. She spent most of her life in Detroit with occasional travel, including Alpena to visit her daughters. My Grandma who moved here following her dream to marry a farmer. And, my Aunt Millie who worked at the hospital as a nurse until retirement. I couldn’t help but touch everything and I know that even gentle touches on historic assets cause decay if hundreds of people are doing it daily. I couldn’t stop myself. The walls. The floors. There was a loose floor tile … I left it. The stair railings. We even laid down on the grass under the trees while waiting for the boat. I felt like I was in a cozy hammock.

I still think about how the memory of chaos and hope is held at that location. A long journey by boat. A new home. Everything, including the language is something to learn and get used to which takes enormous effort. Re-establishing away from the only home your family lineage has known. Learning new food. New laws. A new financial system. You’re anchorless for a spell. Looking back we can see the courage, perseverance, and solid ability to grow through great change. If my Great-grandparents hadn’t immigrated, they might not have survived their home country’s environments, and I wouldn’t be here today, raising kids in the house my Polish great-grandparents built 100 years ago. A lot of uncomfortable change occurred to make today happen.

When we first moved in, my grandmother hadn’t lived at the farm in years. One of the first projects was some kitchen remodeling. It took quite a while and I did the dishes in the bathtub for months. I cooked the same 5 things with a hot plate and a toaster oven. The kids were nutritionally cared for, albeit uninspiring. Nachoes again? It was a modern struggle. Since 2020, when we moved to the farm, life has been moving at the speed of constant change. There has been a consistent flow of adapting. At times it hasn’t felt good, even if the transition to the new means relief. We can become comfortably complacent even with discomfort, not realizing that we have adapted to a container that doesn’t fit. When that discomfort gets too loud, the change process starts. That feeling that something is restricting is an indicator that change may be necessary.

When that lobster instinctively knows to wedge itself between two rocks so it can release its container that has become too small, and it has the blind faith and hope that what comes next is this or something better; then the lobsters have a better handle on change than we do. When I moved to the farm from the City I knew that more property meant more work. I also know from experience that the benefits outweigh the challenges in immeasurable ways. There would be some initial feelings of isolation, I’d have to adjust a lot of routines. Add in the annual pipe freeze in the pump house and a rouge ice storm power outage, and I find myself often straddling two worlds. The worlds being the less complicated slow-living yet survivalist-adjacent style my grandparents and relatives enjoyed in the beautiful, peaceful countryside, and the still fast-paced assembly-line-corporate America work environment I also live in. I’ve chased off porcupines before attending business meetings. Why am I late? Could have been a porcupine. This lifestyle, while difficult to balance sometimes, is far more fulfilling that any other chapter of life I’ve lived so far.

The ability to hope for a better future for your family and achieve it in small steps through the process of incredible change is lineage evolution. I sometimes feel like a modern day pioneer. What would a pioneering lifestyle look like in today’s modern world? Pioneers accept change as the flow of life. Adaptability to different living and working conditions and environments is baseline. A positive outlook that the inevitable discomfort leads to better, is the lifeblood perspective. They create new ways of living. Glass half full? We’re building a new container. It’s not optimistic or pessimistic. It is motivation. Transition is messy and hard to look at, and it is reality. Helping create a new way of doing things while you’re still currently enmeshed in the old way is where it gets wobbly. A crack in the old shell. The change process. Keep walking in the direction you want your life to go. The old shell will eventually dissolve away like dirt washed off vegetables in the rain. The bridge over the gap between what used to be, and what could be, just needs you to keep walking. Demonstrate with every footstep that just like a pioneer of old, you know there is better up ahead even if you can’t see it yet.