The Gospel of Change
May 06, 2025 at 11:26PMIn 2017, James Wade and his wife Jordan were working long hours at unfulfilling jobs, certain that “happines was just around the corner.” Realizing that it was not, the couple purged their possessions and set off in an old truck pulling a travel trailer. Over a two-year journey across 30 states, they searched for a life driven less by money and empty achievement to one geared toward being at peace with oneself. Wade’s piece on venturing into the unknown without a specific plan is particularly poignant upon learning that he’s been navigating life with panic disorder since being diagnosed at age 19.
By threatening my own stability, I was intent on creating something beautiful. But early on, all I could feel was the danger. On that first morning in Big Bend, when we hiked the Lost Mine Trail, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other while weathering an onslaught of intrusive thoughts. How are you going to make money? What if the truck overheats? Why aren’t you happy yet? You did the thing—you’re out here on the trail. What if you have a panic attack? Don’t think about that. Thinking about panic attacks will make you have one. Are you still thinking about it? Will your mental health forever be a detriment to your pathetically reasonable goal of just being OK?
I had yet to learn patience with the anxious, chemically imbalanced part of myself. True transformation takes time. It’s somehow both cyclical and mutable, and it reminds me at every turn of its dynamism. From dry creeks to roaring rivers. A tree dropping its leaves or a whitetail buck in velvet. Breaking waves, cicada shells, or the night making way for the day. Everything is growing, and everything is dying, and it’s all change, all the time. Every second of life because life is forever unfixed. Even the cells in my body are being replaced by the billions—metabolism, homeostasis, my nose itches. Small changes but changes nonetheless.
Prescriptions, therapy, stargazing—it all helps. But I’ve found the best way to be OK is to embrace not being OK, to understand things are going to change in ways I can anticipate and ways I can’t, and that sometimes, for better or worse, those things will impact me. To deny that, or to hide away from it, is to rob myself of the human experience.
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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/05/06/the-gospel-of-change/
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