Alchemy
Whenever I hear a fabulous word like alchemy – just let that roll around in your mouth for a few seconds – I have to look it up, learn about the history of the word and read all of the different meanings and contexts that the word has passed through before arriving at the current destination.
It doesn’t matter how I heard it, but something about the word draws me in like a moth to a flame and I have to investigate. I have yet to be disappointed in this exercise because whatever it was that drew me in, leads me to finding the ‘thing’ that makes me want to read, mull it over, and apply it to life. The word ‘alchemy’ is no exception.
Alchemy as a verb is transitive (which itself is one of my favorite words, meaning passing from one state to the other – thank you, Oxford). Alchemy means to treat, produce or transform. Also, in the abstract it references the seemingly magical or miraculous power of transmutation or extraction.
My own takeaway is transformation. It feels like it could be violent or as if there is a change that is resisted, and the alchemy is that moment of the transformation, like in wrestling where the observer can’t tell whose arms and legs belong to whom. Only in one’s own alchemy, it’s an internal fight. It’s the phoenix rising from the ashes or the protagonist becoming what is within.
I have had lots of these transformations, an inner battle where my conscious self is wrestling with my subconscious self. It’s the alchemy of heart vs. brain. I’d bet you’ve had these too. Sometimes big, huge things like who you should marry, if you should marry, what job you should take, what route to choose to work. The alchemy comes when you allow yourself the time to listen to the heart (a.k.a. the cliché trusting the gut).
I believe the heart should be allowed to win more
than the brain.
A legit wrestling match has two periods that last three minutes apiece. There is even a required break between the periods. The point is that there is time in a wrestling match. When we jump too quickly with our hearts or heads and there isn’t the wrestling match, then there can be no alchemy, or true transformation. Alchemy shouldn’t be avoided even though it can be painful.
I think the thing we often lack is that crucial break. We rush, we jump, we ‘go for it’, we ‘send it’. We hate the struggle and just want to do it, get it, make it already. The lack of patience and contemplation that pushes away the transformation of honoring oneself and the heart and gut is a way of delaying the inevitable. The inevitable of feeling the alchemy of the self.
If I think back over all of the big mistakes I have made in my life that involved a choice that I thought I ‘should’ make and every single time it was the wrong decision. When I write all the pros and cons down on a piece of paper, that’s my head trying to make a case for why it should win. If I have to write all that down to convince myself, I know without doubt that my heart already knows. It sometimes is the simple decision of what do I want to do? vs what should I do?
If the heart and mind align there doesn’t need
to be a match.
Have you had those times in your life where you just had to do something? You couldn’t explain it but it just felt right? You knew it was the decision that you had to make? You felt that it was crazy or risky or not like you, but you just knew it was right. That’s the heart superseding the brain. That’s the heart pinning the brain on the mat. And those times where you did what you felt you had to do and it turned out being the wrong decision? Those are points of growth, and growth can be painful.
The fight that comes before and after that break? That’s the alchemy of transformation.
