“The only constant is change,” is the phrase running through my head consistently—for me, perhaps the only constant is constantly running that phrase through my mind.
It’s like an Ouroboros—a mental exercise of the snake eating its tail.
The phrase is generally attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. I get that he probably didn't say that exact thing—he was speaking Greek, after all.
Still, this is a phrase we use in our culture to remind us that whatever is currently happening is not going to be this way forever. I think it's a wonderful thing to remember when I'm experiencing hard emotions or events. It reminds me that there will be a shift and this difficult period will pass.
I'm currently standing in a moment of drastic change—moving out of the house that I recently settled into with my mom, leaving a community that I love and a city I have lived in for most of my adult life, and venturing out into the Northern California mountains to Fiddletown, population 187.
I’m excited and I’m nervous.
Most of my life has been about mixing things up and making new choices. I look back and I've got a list of well-defined lives I have lived: rebellious teen to touring actor, theatre entrepreneur, married mom, global explorer, erotic adventurer, psychonaut, van life woman, and fellow traveler with my adult son. There are more and many of them overlap, but the thread of leaning into the unexplored seems to be key to what makes up a Mel.
In my undergrad theatre history class, my professor Grant McKernie introduced the ancient Greek concept of Moira—individual destiny or fate. It's personified by the Moirai, the Fates: three sisters who spin the thread of life, measure its length, and cut it when it's time to die. Grant explained that the Greeks didn't believe exclusively in fate, as in you are born with your lot in life and there's nothing you can do about it. They also believed in free will—the idea that humans can make their own choices to determine their destiny over the course of a lifetime. They were able to hold those two seemingly contradictory ideas together simultaneously.
I am 100 percent sure that I have redefined it in my own way, just as we have redefined Heraclitus over time. What my 19-year-old brain understood Grant to say as he attempted to reconcile these ideas is that we are born in the middle of a spider web that represents our life. We stand in the center and there is a predetermined outside edge—think of it as a circle, one continuous line. Between you in the middle of the web and that final line, you can choose to follow any of the winding threads of the spider web, but you will always end up at the same place: your fate, that final line. Another ouroboros, perhaps—this time not in my mind, but in the very structure of existence itself.
When I look back at all of the choices I’ve made and lives I’ve led up to this point, I realize that there is a thread that holds all of these existences together and that is that my life is an ongoing experiment in authentic living rather than a problem to be solved once and then maintained. Which brings me right back to this moment and the Messy Love Lab—my Substack experiment in vulnerability and creating community.
In my improv days, I was a student of Keith Johnstone, often identified as the grandfather of improvisational theatre. One of the things that he would say is, “There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes,’ and there are people who prefer to say ‘No.’ Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.” I am definitely a ‘Yes-sayer!’
So as I pack up my guitar, journals, and art supplies and get ready to head toward Fiddletown, I'm wondering: Will this move to population 187 be another thread leading to that same predetermined edge, or am I finally breaking free of the web entirely? But then, maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the point isn't whether I end up at the same place at the end of the web, but that I keep choosing threads that feel authentic rather than safe. And still, the phrase keeps cycling through my mind—"the only constant is change"—but perhaps what's actually constant is my willingness to say yes to the unknown, to trust that whatever comes next will continue my journey towards Essential Mel. And if that means I'm destined to keep experimenting until I die, well, there are worse fates than being someone who never stopped becoming. The ouroboros completes another loop, the spider web awaits another wandering, and next week I hit the gas toward whatever version of Mel is waiting for me in those Northern California mountains.
"I'm destined to keep experimenting until I die, well, there are worse fates than being someone who never stopped becoming."
If this isn't a sankalpa I could live by, I dont know what is. This is ALIVENESS at its best. I admire you for all the unknown Yeses you have said in your life. Thank you for inviting me along for the ride here.
This!!! “I die, well, there are worse fates than being someone who never stopped becoming.”
True living is to never stop becoming, my friend! 🩷