I love an illustration that drives home something so obvious but in a new and memorable way! I was reading the book The Secret World of Weather the other day, learning about stable and unstable systems, and had a revelation of sorts.
The author used population dynamics of rabbits and foxes as an analogy, saying that if the rabbits do well, the foxes do well too…to a point. If foxes do too well, they eat too many rabbits. The rabbit population then plunges, and foxes in turn suffer, allowing the rabbits to bounce back.
The rabbit population in this example can be said to be “stable” because there are forces at play that keep that system in balance, even as it fluctuates. But if disease suddenly wipes out all the foxes, the system spirals out of control, overrun by rabbits. As the author says:
In stable systems, a change creates forces that bring things back toward the starting point. In an unstable system, a change leads to more change, which sets up a loop of greater changes still.
Wait a minute! Change plays a role in stability? Is it possible that what makes systems stable is not the absence of change, but the ability to deal with it?
It reminded me of something we covered in a counselling class this semester — hooks and helps. Hooks are patterns of thought, behaviour, and action that take us away from our intended goal. Helps are forces that allow us to break free of the hooks, acting to stabilize us, and moving us toward our goal. Without those helps, the damaging hooks can cause us to spiral, leading to serious instability.
I think what felt so revelatory to me is that subconsciously I’ve always equated stability with sameness. No bumps, just a flat line. But that’s stasis, not stability! There’s another name for flatlining — death. Life, on the other hand, is defined by movement, rhythm, flow — from our heartbeat to our breath to the aging process itself.
Change is not what threatens my stability…if I have helps — the skills and practices and forces at work in and through me to deal with change in healthy ways.
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time thinking about all the what ifs of life, planning for every potential worst-case scenario. Perhaps it’s part of being an Enneagram 5, knowing I need to pace myself and guard my energy and resources, convinced that something catastrophic is sure to happen if I were ever forced to run on empty.
That aspect of my personality has always assumed stability was dependent upon me anticipating every bend and smoothing out every bump in the road before I even reach it…and that is downright exhausting. But in a system where stability and change are not mutually exclusive, the bumps and bends are not my enemies when I learn that resilience is rhythmic, not static.
I don’t have to make myself impervious to discomfort or shut down every emotion in order to be stable. That would eventually tip me into pretty unstable territory. No matter how much I might want to substitute stasis for stability and just stand still, the moving sidewalk of life keeps going.
Shifting my paradigm of stability to accept change as the very instrument that keeps me in tune gives me courage to keep moving with hope, to do and think and feel my way through every change of scenery. Bending but not breaking. Stretching but bouncing back. Learning the rhythms of resilience like Saint Paul, who once said he was:
…hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (II Cor. 4:8-9, NIV).