Nature of Change

Moments pass and we continue breathing in and out. Standing or sitting, too. Just keep doing what we always do. Minute after minute. Day after day. Weeks and months come and go, so too the years. Time passes. And we are changed.

A wrinkle here, maybe. A crease there. Oh yes, a hitch or two in our steps. Too early to change our gait but the seed of difference has been planted.

Routines seem the same but compared with photos and letters of a few years ago we notice changes too subtle to catch when living them; no, they are noticed only from a vantage of time having passed.

The kids are taller, their faces more defined. Their antics are less child-like and a tiny bit more adult. Not yet adult, of course, but signs they are getting there.

The house too is a little frazzled; time to paint, maybe change out a rug or two. Maybe some new wall art? Or a new chair? At least some freshened upholstery.

And the dog, poor thing. Her back is a little saggy, and her tail just a might droopy. Not as quick as in years passed. Time is marching on for her, too, but she remains sweet and loyal and loving to us all. Just spends more time sleeping. Oh how I wish I could sleep her sleep of deep, deep rest.

Now in the middle of the night I teeter toward the bathroom for a short visit. If I tarry too long the door opens and the dog’s glistening nose peeks past the door’s edge. Checking up on me, she is; needs to know we are OK and accounted for. But she notes changes in our routine, too.

Slowly life evolves. In my head, in my body, in experiences and also emotions. Relationships morph into different phases. We treat each other differently, just a little, not enough to know for certain but something is ever so slightly different than it once was.

And our understanding of the world, too, shifts in small ways. We learn to understand our context however imperfectly. Cues gathered moment by moment, most unnoticed, but gathering just the same. The gestalt of our existence is growing and changing.

When an issue of importance comes to mind for the first time it has not just this instant formed. It has been forming for quite some time. We just didn’t see it. It is there nonethesame, and it is changing someone’s understanding of the world. Ours, too, when the tempo becomes more insistent.

And so the ebb and flow of ideas travel hither and yon making contact with various people and minds. Ways of thinking are affected. Eventually the ideas coalesce in patterns that hold special meaning. In time significance takes shape and one day, without expecting it, it is on the front page, or maybe on page 43 of the daily paper. Some article, some notice that an event has occurred with unknown results.  But the evidence of its being has been made known.

It will grow now like a newborn with all of life before it. It will shape into whatever it will and take our attention.

Is this how the Ku Klux Klan came to be? Or the Alt-Right? Or maybe the independent thinkers with inconclusive thoughts pushing forward their views as if now a political party? And what of the Donald Trumps of the world? Were they always there growing in consequence that would eventually throw off a nation’s balance?

The imbalance is an effect. It is not a truth or philosophy. It is just a presence with enough people speaking for it that makes us pause and think. What is it this idea needs from me? Why now? What in this form?

Struggling to understand. Why are they so angry. Have they not been paying attention to daily happenings forming current history? Do they not see the confluence of events and thoughts that make sense of our context?

And now we, the prepared, are suddenly not so prepared. Might a Trump become president? Might experience and accumulated wisdom and understanding be tossed on the trash heap while something totally unprepared and untested takes hold of our nation?

It might. If we allow it. It will if we do not reach out and correct the record, build broader understanding. The government does not owe you a living. It does not owe you a job. Life requires you to be engaged. Don’t complain if things don’t work out as you had hoped while you were not paying attention. While you were enjoying yourself with other pastimes.

The living of life takes focus and engagement. Are you here in the present? Are you paying attention to the now? Do you understand how it has emerged from the past and sets us on a pathway to the future? Do you understand that the future will happen whether you are ready or not?

Do you? Understand?

And so we live our daily routines often not aware of the changes filling our landscape of time and experience. In so many ways too small to notice, change is shaping a new time, a new world, a new order of understanding.

For those not paying attention, a shock is in store.

Their anger and disappointment is theirs. Not ours. But it might just change the course of history anyway.

That’s the nature of things. The nature of change. And how we understand the world, or not.

October 4, 2016