Breaking out of the Ruts

Affirmation: Change happens one choice at a time

There is this blog I read regularly; A Life in Whales. She has a picture on it that I just love. Her photography is amazing. When I saw this particular picture it mesmerized me. I seemed that this was a physical portrayal of the result of habits in my life; particularly around food. Now the "ruts" in this picture - or are they gorges or valleys? It's hard to tell scale from the picture. I choose to think of them as deep gorges. Anyway the ruts are cut deep, well worn over years of water runoff. There is even grass grown over them, not raw mud as if new. But time worn, grass, beautiful grass has grown over the ruts, softening the scaring of the earth by the water runoff. If you were walking in one of these ruts you would naturally just follow the course that the water had taken when it formed the rut. You wouldn't see much besides what was in the rut. You could see what is ahead, what was behind, and the walls of the rut, but it all looks pretty much the same. It also looks to me to be some slow going, lots of things to stumble over. Or you could choose to climb out of the rut. That would take some doing. Expend a lot of energy climbing out. You can't see what is outside of the rut, so you would be taking a chance that life would be any different outside the rut. But IF you took the chance, made the effort, look at what it above the rut! Expansive spaces, beautiful scenery, more choices, more directions to choose to go. And seems that the traveling might be a bit smoother, if not still uphill.

That is what I think breaking out of lifelong habits must be like. Stuck in a rut, stumbling, everything seems the same, feels like there is no choice to make but the one you made before. Climbing out of the habit, takes incredible work, perseverance, and determination. But the effort is so worth it, isn't it?