HOW TO ACCEPT CHANGE
Why is it so hard to accept change? How do we make sense out of it? It is hard enough that the clock changes by an hour twice a year.
My body still wakes up at 4 am (yes, I am an early bird!), the dog still gets hungry right at 6:15 am and 4:30 pm …and then Daylight Savings time kicks in.
Suddenly, everything is out of whack from a one hour change. A tiny change. What about major changes – births and deaths, megabucks and bankruptcy, snowstorms and heatwaves…and pandemics.
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it, and join the dance,” says Alan Watts.
I get it. So I join with my neighbors and we put on our dancing shoes. We set our clocks back, get the shovels out in December and the air conditioners in July.
We go to baby showers with gifts, and to funerals with casseroles, hugs, and the slow dance of grief.
I would love to plunge into winning the megabucks, but unfortunately, I had to learn the dance steps of bankruptcy at a rather young age. I did not feel like dancing!
Nor did I understand the wisdom in Watts’ words. It has taken me a lifetime to learn to waltz my way through change. I wish I had paid attention to all the dance lessons growing up.
WHY DOES IMPERMANENCE FRIGHTEN US?
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“It all goes away.
Eventually, everything goes away.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert
Just when I think I have it all together, the sky falls! And I tremble. Chicken Little also felt the fear of change. She was frightened out of her feathers when she cried “The sky’s falling!” (Photo by Artem-Makarov on Unsplash)
It is a scary thing to have the sky fall.
Or to lose a mate. Likewise, growing older and moving to a new home can rock our world.
I looked in the mirror this morning and saw a wrinkle that grew in the night! I swear it wasn’t there yesterday. Where do these things come from?!
It’s not just about self-image. It is about the reality that I am not the same physically as I was yesterday.
Today it is a wrinkle. Tomorrow it may be false teeth. And suddenly all the stories (lies, mostly) that I have heard or that my inner storyteller makes up come flooding in.
I didn’t choose the changes. I don’t know who I am anymore.
Robert Frost captures this feeling in these poignant words…
(Photo by Chris-Lawton on Unsplash)
“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down today.
Nothing gold can stay.”
― Robert Frost
IS THERE ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT CHANGE?
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“Thanks to impermanence,
everything is possible.” —Thich Nhat Hahn
One thing that Chicken Little never understood is the power of possibility.
I used to have a sign in my office that read “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” It was my response to the popular refrain “But we’ve never done it that way before!!”
I bit my tongue to keep from making a snide remark for it was obvious nothing new had been tried in a long time.
The people who came in and out of my office would rather keep what they knew instead of opening to other possibilities.
Fear of change stops dreaming.
When dreaming stops so does growth.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it’s not the same river
and he’s not the same man.” —Heraclitus
Whenever I think about whether I am able to make a change—any change—I ask myself what would life be like if I never changed from a bottle to a cup, from home to first grade, from college to the work world, from cheerios to quiche.
Every day is new. I can dream and grow and dance because I am not the same person I was yesterday. Or even a moment ago
(Photo by Amelia-Bartlett on Unsplash)
CHANGES THAT COME WITH AGING
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(Photo by Kyle-Glenn on Unsplash)
“The butterfly counts not months
but moments, and has time enough.”
― Rabindranath Tagore
Depending on how old we are, the experience of aging may seem very slow (as when we were fifteen and wanted to drive), or it may be relentlessly careening through the years as if aging were jet-propelled.
I find myself lamenting that I don’t have enough time for all my goals today, let alone for my dreams for tomorrow.
Ah…Rabindranath Tagore says the key is in the moments. There are exactly 86400 seconds in 24 hours but the number of moments is limitless.
How long is a moment?
A moment stretches from insight to beauty. From idea to surrender.
It’s about as long as it takes a leaf to fall from a tree and take on its new identity as part of the forest ecosystem.
I, like a butterfly, have enough time if I stop counting the number of wing flutters I have left and start living in just this moment. (Photo by Evie-S. on Unsplash)
“Sunsets, like childhood,
are viewed with wonder not just because
they are beautiful but because
they are fleeting.” ― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift
THE WONDER OF CHANGE
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If we lived in a world without change, what would we be missing?
How often do we find ourselves saying we never really missed something until it disappeared?
One of the gifts of impermanence is the heightened awareness it gives us for this moment.
Gratitude. Humility. Wonder.
When life changes around us, we have an option.
We can wail at the loss, or we can embrace the gift it reveals.
I, for one, want to keep an open heart to possibility, to hope, to the sunrise.
Each day, each moment is marked by the wonder of change.
(Photo by Oscar-Sutton on Unsplash)
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