Heal your life. Heal your body. Heal your relationships. Heal your traumas, your thyroid, your running stride, your office atmosphere, your dog’s barking. Heal. Heal. Heal. There’re a lot of calls to heal in the air, in the media, in the suggestions made by coaches, leaders, employers’ HR, spiritually minded people, and others. And some times it’s too much.
What is this clamor for healing really about? Why do blogs, podcasts, YouTubes, TikTok videos, and books on healing—covering nearly every aspect of life on this planet—fill our 24/7 time? Why do ads for lifestyle coaches pop up every time I scroll looking for the phone number for the local Thai restaurant? What doesn’t need healing these days?
I don’t know about you, but these days when I come across the words “healing,” or “heal,” I shrug my shoulders and look at the ground hoping to find some well-organized ants to observe. The word “healing” has turned hackneyed and overworked, disconnected from its original meaning. We need a new expression because it’s the word that’s overworked, not its essence. With a new expression, perhaps a new awareness of healing will follow along. I, for one, am getting a sore neck from watching the ants and their inexhaustible work ethics.
The way I see it, healing is synonymous with evolution. Healing = evolving. I heal = I evolve. There’s a power in evolving that’s as ancient as man and woman. We have always evolved. We have always moved from status quo to a different, improved state. Because evolving—like healing— is not an end station. Evolve comes from the Latin word evolvere, meaning to “unroll” or “unfold.” Evolve describes an unraveling, something that is happening gradually, a move toward something better, whether you insist on it or you simply float along with the current tide. Likewise, healing is not a static place, but a dynamic process that isn’t fitted into one permanent point. Because there’s always more potential for healing, more unfolding into a new state, just as there’s always more potential for evolving.
When did you last hear of someone escaping evolution? Evolving happens whether we seek it or not. Whether we listen to a life coach’s podcast or not. Sure, we may be able to push the process, but healing=evolving even finds its way to those who aren’t looking for it, or those who resist a change from status quo. Because it’s our human nature, the burden or the blessing, depending on your perspective, we are endowed with. We are beings that naturally evolve, that naturally heal. We don’t always evolve or heal the way we want to, but that’s a different conversation.
When healing is swapped with evolving in the onslaught of daily messages, it takes on a new meaning, a new power. With the evolving mindset, I look at an advertisement or offer with new eyes and curiosity and respond: Ah, that’s a place that offers help to evolve anxiety. Suddenly, I no longer feel jaded, but appreciative of the good intentions of evolutionary assistance. That’s the power of moving from healing to evolving.
Sometimes it’s just time for a change, even when it comes to a simple word. And that time is now.
Happy evolution.
