Recently I wrote about denial, the attitude, not the river. Today I would like to take up the subject of avoidance, a trait with which I have become somewhat familiar over the years. The human mind is a wonderful and mysterious thing. It can invent reasons to avoid things we wish to put out of mind with uncanny speed and precision.

Recently I moved to a new home. I did not want to leave my former residence but as a renter and not an owner that choice was not mine to make and although it was a cordial parting of the ways I left a delightful home in a part of this community where I have lived for several decades. Change they say is good—but it did not seem that way for a while.

I am almost over it now—I can still visit friends and locations that are important to me, it’s only a short drive, but psychologically it might have been a journey of a great many more miles from the impact it had on my sense of well-being. In that state of mind packing to move became a bridge I did not wish to cross. In some bizarre way I construed packing as acceptance of what was inevitable. Also, I am an orderly person and the disorder of pulling apart everything I had carefully assembled to make my own was deeply unsettling. Never mind that my new home was likely to be a big improvement in some ways and certainly not a setback.

So, I avoided; or more precisely I found inventive ways to postpone to a later day, things that I could and probably should have done right then and there. This is procrastination which is a trait I most definitely do not subscribe to in any other part of my life. In fact, I am so uncomfortable with the idea of putting off things that must be done that I get hives just thinking about it. No, seriously I do not typically avoid. Sometimes, and this comes after many years of experience, I have learned I must wait for something to ripen. Not everything is best done at once, some things need to mature so that I have the information I need, or the right conditions to achieve a successful outcome. I have had a few painful lessons in patience along the way.

But I must admit this time my avoidance was not for any good reason, but rather a symptom of my reluctance to change a lot of admittedly small things about my life. Like many people I try to settle into habits and circumstances that are comfortable, that is they suit me and my way of life. When I am forced to change, forced to examine those habits and devise new ones to accommodate new situations, there is a part of me that rebels. Why, darn it? Yet I am the first to say that too much comfort, too much statism is decidedly unhealthy. What’s the old saying about the difference between a rut and a grave?

In the end I took some will power, some stern talking to my inner self to make clear that the date of the move was fast approaching and that I would not be ready if I did not get on with it. Yes, there were some boggles and a few small challenges along the way but the move happened and I am getting accommodated, slowly, every so slowly to my new life.

Pretty soon I will start forming some new habits, new routines and they will become the comfortable buffer surrounding me and buffering a fractious world. But while in mid transplant, while my roots are without soil and the climate of my new surroundings are still evolving, I am like a tender young plant. Who knows what I will be like when I am settled in?