February 5, 2010

Go With The Flow

Change is inevitable; even if we sit where we are doing nothing it happens all around us. There is nothing we can do about it.



Some people embrace it while others fight it; they are most comfortable when everything remains the same.



It can be a good thing if it’s what you expected or looked forward to but sometimes it comes in a form we don’t want making the process hard to accept.



Loss can be devastating but afterwards there is often something even better that comes along. I look around my neighborhood at the devastation caused by the firestorm last year and now see new bigger homes in place where smaller older ones resided previously. I’m sure the people who live there miss their burned possessions but are enjoying their new homes.



During the 80’s recession many people lost their jobs and even their homes. I knew a family that had to move in with his parents for a while until they got back on their feet. He decided to open a mail center store with UPS pick up. They borrowed money from family since banks frowned on the foreclosure in their credit rating. Their shop sells boxes, gift cards and anything you might need to send a package. The business has thrived and they now own a much bigger house than the one lost a couple of decades a go. He is much happier working for himself and has risen above the change that occurred in his life. Would he have opened his own business if he hadn’t been laid off? Probably not: it’s not always easy to make huge changes in our lives unless forced to.



Some people remain stuck and can’t seem to move on. There is a woman that lost her son in the war and because she felt she has been wronged this person goes around to military funerals picketing with signs disrupting and causing trouble. She is so obsessed with this mission her husband has divorced her. Now all alone she only has one goal in life and that is chaos. This woman could have done so much with her life and for the good of others but instead she is cemented in the past and cannot move forward.



I know a woman that was married to a man that suffered from depression. She met him in college. He was a serious melancholy man but he intrigued her and she fell in love with him. There were days when he couldn’t function and she had to take care of him as well as their two little boys. One day he couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide. She was very sad for quite a while but had to move on and deal with the changes life had dealt. A few years later she met another man and remarried. Her second husband is so different from the first. He’s full of life and even ran for political office. She is happier than I’ve ever seen her.



Change is what you make of it. It’s not always easy but in the end things have a way of working themselves out.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like this essay and its wisdom. There is no law but change. Everything we love is fated to fade, and new things are always emerging. That is true of living things, of human society and customs, of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. Always changing, always unfolding, always experimenting. The Creation is an ongoing process, not a completed event. Nothing is permanent except the wise and resilient spirit a very few of us are fortunate to have.

I am your New Zealand admirer. You revealed recently in Topix that you have French ancestry. If I am anything, I am the son of my French mother. Stubborn, practical, tight with money, a shrewd observer of humans and their societies. An eyewitness to the second world war. An austere Christian. A mother who shared with me things about sex and the body that few boys my age were told.