In a Swing Change?

Taking a step back to take a step forward

You may have seen a video circulating on the internet recently of a pro golfer practicing her swing. She’s standing in her own space at a driving range when we hear a man from outside the frame begin to tell her what she should be doing differently. He does not seem to know that she is a professional, competitive golfer. She is, after all, a young woman. He corrects her repeatedly and then, when she refocuses herself to whale on the ball, he takes credit for the improvement. It’s a cringe-inducing, funny, and relatable video. The Guardian picked it up here.

But beyond the grating gender (and age) dynamics at play in the video, another thing stood out to me that I found my brain rolling around like a Lemonhead on the tongue. The golfer used this exquisite phrase that may be common parlance to golfers but was new to me. She explained to the onlooker (several times, ahem) that she was “going through a swing change.” She was well aware that her skill may not appear to be top level because she was actively reworking her technique. She was consciously deconstructing things in order to enhance her skill and improve her performance for the long term. It might look less than perfect at the moment, but she understood the larger picture.

“I’m going through a swing change at the moment.”

I found myself thinking about this over and over because it felt like the perfect metaphor for times of smaller-scale creative and personal transition. It’s not a crisis or depression, but it’s also not yet a sailing success.

I wrote in my book about the occasional need to deconstruct a former life to make space for the new. I wanted to normalize descents for people in their 20s and 30s in a time of life when everyone is expecting you to be on the ascent. What are you looking forward to? What are your goals? What’s next?

But often, to clarify our paths and make sure we’re on track, we need to take a step backward. We need to take a survey of where we’re at and make sure we’re bringing all of our skills and self to bear. We need to confirm that we’re headed in the direction that feels right for us, and not just right for other people. We might need to stumble over and over to find our footing.

Life hates stagnation. Like a body of water without movement or tributaries, a stagnant life will begin to grow mold around the edges. Cosmetic changes alone won’t alter what’s happening under the surface. Things will begin to feel off. As a primary feature of existence, life calls for renewal. To get to renewal, we need to let some things die: relationships, jobs, businesses, patterns, obsessions, interests, and techniques. We need to let go of what is no longer working to make space for the new, even if the new is not yet entirely clear.

On a larger scale, these patterns of death and rebirth appear in frameworks throughout human culture. Alchemy: the various steps to transform base earth into gold. Astrology: a Pluto transit perhaps, or a Saturn return that will force a person to step it up. Anthropology: an initiation rite. Mythology: the Hero’s Journey and encounters with the Gods, like Persephone’s trip into the underworld. And biology: the snake shedding its skin and the chrysalis that finally delivers the butterfly. In Jungian psychology, it’s the journey of individuation. These frameworks are all different ways of translating some of the invisible truths of life. They don’t overlap exactly. But they each provide a symbolic language beyond medical diagnosis to make sense of psychological and emotional descent. Sometimes things are not going down because of failure, but because of necessity.

I found myself drawn to this video of the golfer because it struck me as poetic language to convey a lite transformation, without the underworld or the caterpillars liquefying in cocoons. This was an intentional shift she was taking on. I may appear messy before I put the pieces back together again. I’m going to get worse at something before I get better. I’m going through a swing change at the moment.

Have you ever gone through a swing change in life? What was your experience with this mini death/rebirth cycle?

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Coming up:

This Saturday: My six-week seminar on Carl Jung’s book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections continues with session 2. We had so much fun in our first session last weekend and there’s still time to join us! You’ll get the recording of our last class as soon as you register.

This Sunday: March 24th at 10am PDT, my next workshop for paid subscribers of Self & Society. (Paid subscribers, look in your header/footer.)

May & June: An online workshop exploring dreamwork and developing a personal practice of engaging with your dreams, from a Jungian perspective.

June 19-23: a retreat on San Juan Island for Quarterlifers on the journeys of initiation, transformation, and the Summer Solstice.

June 26-30: a retreat on San Juan Island to explore the power of synchronicity and the wisdom of the ancient I Ching oracle.