There Is Love in Evolve

In an alternate universe, I would be a linguist. In my last year of college I took a graduate level linguistics course and loved it. I love the way words sound, the way we form them with our mouths and all of their parts. I love the differences and similarities of the various languages I’ve studied. I love dreaming in a different language. But what I love most about languages is how they evolve.

Take a look at English: in the past 400 years, think of how it’s evolved from Shakespeare’s time to how it is now. Look at what happened to it when it was brought across an ocean to a new continent, and other languages came over from other countries and continued to influence it over the years. We now have words like “I’ma.” I’ma go to the store. I am continually fascinated by how things evolve. And I love that they do.

I am deep in writing mode now. I am working on the last fourth of my current novel. Things are coming together, but they are evolving as they do, in ways that I had not anticipated. And I love that fiercely, because it brings an authenticity to the story like nothing else. The characters evolve on their own – my autonomous children. They come alive in ways I never designed. I think that’s what I love most about the creative process of writing. And it can happen with nonfiction, too – sometimes an article or blog post deviates from what you had planned for it, taking the focus in a new direction. It’s no longer about what you thought it would be about, but that’s okay because it becomes something better than it would have been. It evolved.

My son’s autism has evolved. When Neil was diagnosed in 1997, I was not told if it would. But it did, with many years of therapy and determination on his part. The autism evolved from causing him to be nonverbal with severe sensory issues to slowly, slowly allowing him to acquire language skills and ways to cope with and filter his sensory issues. His autism has also evolved to include epilepsy, but we are working with that, and learning. As he enters adulthood, we are still evolving with his autism. No doubt we always will.

Relationships (family, work, friendship, or romantic) can be that way too. Somebody says or does something that takes it in a different direction, positive or negative. How we respond determines whether we are learning – evolving – or not.  And often that’s where the love comes in. If we come from a place of love when we are responding to another person, we will evolve. In that moment of choice, we evolve. We move forward for the better, able to cope with the next step, the next thing we encounter on our path.

There is love in evolve.

(image courtesy of ipoem.co.uk)