Front Flip

In a world that demands our vaulting evolution whilst decrying the process and the time it takes to grow, I have noticed a curiously toxic phenomenon. I'm calling it a front-flip, because it smacks of a backflip only with a vomitous forward motion.It seems now that once you reach a shiny new plateau of understanding all the tiny steps you climbed, right back from the place you started, must be disowned. And beyond that, must be derided and shamed, as though your ignorance until the shimmering moment the cloud lifted is unholy and unbecoming. As though you fell out of the sky into the ways and opinions you have now, sans development or education or learning or growing. Inexplicably fully formed.I'm not just talking about Doreen Virtue here or newly minted privilege fingerpointers. Post eclipse I have watched as people change their mind or status or beliefs. This is standard protocol post eclipsia. What isn't as common is when they immediately hang shit on their predecessor (and thus too on those still where they were merely moments before) adding their evangelical voice to the chorus of criticism that rarely offers solution.Maybe they forget that we are all always becoming. That we don't know what we don't know until we do. That our starting point is a part of us. That every single triumph and tragedy, misstep or mistake along the way contributed to getting you where you find yourself trilling from today.Our life is not about disowning our past iterations or trading them in for showpony sentimentality and a new tribe of sycophants. It is about integrating our many selves into a coherent humanity that allows for our vaulting evolution, our tangents and sidesteps. The glorious changing of our minds.Your new right now doesn't have to make your history wrong. It stands upon it, waiting for the day when it will support your next floor and the one that may come after that. If you demolish all that is now below you, there is simply nothing left to hold you up.I take pleasure in my transformations. Few know how many there are in me.~ Anais NinCartoon from the Evolution Baby filmclip by Pearl JamWords © Kerrie Basha, 2017