No. 52, after a tough winter

    March 26, 2009 –  Sheep don’t change much, which is something a lot of people find comforting about them. I’m not wild about sheep.
  In the past couple of years, I have had to change quite a bit, and I find that it has altered my relationships with many of the people I know. It’s easy to be smug and self-righteous about change, and change is an elemental part of my life. But it’s hard to do it, and it’s difficult to not divide people into categories: people who are willing to change, and people who are not. I have good friends who prefer to live in dread and panic, in addictions and obsessions, in horrid jobs and bitter or empty relationships, and some people want to change those circumstances, and some don’t.
  Change isn’t just a matter of will. Some people can’t change, due to all sorts of circumstances – money, illness, kids depending on them. Some people are just too afraid. I do sympathisize.
  But people who have had “awakenings” – religious, spiritual, therapeutic, personal – do speak a different language, are a tribe unto themselves. And so are people who cannot come to face themselves. Neither is superior to the other. But they are different.
  Change has defined a lot of my life, and much of it has been foolish, even worse. Still, it is tied to growth, to creativity, to a determination to find the things I have been seeking in life. I am not wise enough to know which change is good, and which isn’t, or to tell others whether or not they ought to change, although I have fallen victim to that. But change is a seminal tool of life, I am coming to see, and it can define us and our relationship to the world.