My father likes to say, paraphrasing Heraclitus, "there's nothing constant in life save change". And as I get older, as time has passed, I find that more and more true.
Life is mercurial. Family, work, ambition, geography are all in flux. Grandparents age, parents become grandparents, children become adults become parents, babies are born, families divide and segment as they expand and become familes of their own. Careers shrink and grow and morph. Hirings and firings and layoffs and promotions. Raises and title changes. Professions vary- finance to consulting to management to law to medicine to sculpting to street sweeping to ticket tacking- on and on. The push and pull of economics and interpersonal connection precipitate moves from apartment to condo, condo to house, or back again, may precipitate moves rural to urban to suburban or back again. Alternating region, climate, population. Life in constant swirling motion, at whatever speed, sonic or glacial.
This is fact, indisputable. And for people like me, people reluctant to change, it can be unpleasant. Even feel, at times, like a betrayal. But that is the way things are. Humanity a wonderful chaotic pulsing web of expanding and contracting, criss-crossing, connecting and isolating paths which parallel then diverge, twine then deviate. This is the nature of life over time. Things change. On a long enough timeline, everything changes.
And that is just. That is correct. That is natural. Acceptance of this fundamental truth can bring balance and contentment in the face of those sudden(or gradual) digressions from the norm that may so perturb us. The future is uncertain, certainty an illusion we construct for comfort. But the opposite of stability is adventure. The unknown a font of opportunity.
As we age we most evolve, grow, learn, adapt. For nothing is still, nothing silent, nothing static.
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