Spurts and Starts

Growth isn’t gradual. Growth is sudden and abrupt. For the longest time no significant change is really visible and then suddenly it hits us. You can almost hear the ‘chachunk’ as the tracks switch and the whole network of trains and traffic flow down a different route, towards a different end.

That’s because most of it happens beneath the surface. That old cliché of the iceberg of your brain became a cliché I the first place, simply because it was such an apt description, down to the very water tension keeping you afloat. Beneath the surface, where we constantly venture, but never see, lies the true you.

There the ice accumulated and changes, as the seas swirls and tugs. We don’t know what happens down there, till suddenly the whole weight of the iceberg shifts and from one day to the next people suddenly look at you strange, wondering where you went.

It happened to my former colleague and new boss. His promotion was like the iceberg of his soul being torpedoed. ‘Who are you and what did you do with me friend?’

Of course there are always signs. Those little character traits that you were able to ignore before, but have now being magnified and intensified, focused and empowered. That look that you questioned for a moment, but then disregarded as paranoia and those comments that you just hoped were meant in jest.

Not that it would have mattered. After all, in the end, it’s their iceberg. Just watch, learn and try to learn as much as they changed. All change is for the good, just not always that of the changed.