Change

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Change.

Think about that word for a brief minute. Really let it sink in. Let it slosh around inside you and coat your insides. Feel the many connotations of the meaning of the word. It is like milk of magnesia of life.

Change.

 Dictionaries define change in many ways. It can be a noun or a verb or an idiom. A cashier can hand it to you in smaller bills or coins then you gave them, along with your purchase. “The change changed hands.”

It seems to me that change is also the entirety of our being. I am rapidly and constantly in some state of change. The world that I look out at is in continual flux. Some changes I seem to battle with, some I don’t notice too much, some display themselves with shockingly regularity. Personal change seems like the weather to me. One day it is raining, the next snowing, and the next the sun shines down upon me. It could be car troubles, work troubles or troubles with people in your life that are breaking up the harmonic progression of your traveling path. It could not be problems at all...a new friend, a happy place or more focused vision.

The act of encountering the roadblocks, speed bumps and potholes of change, (notice the analogies of the road, don’t know why they all were road related but they are) add a large part to the variety of life’s journey. Or maybe for this paragraph it should be life’s car trip.

But for all the confusion that change can bring I try to think in bullet points about what it truly represents. It may well be a metamorphosis. Simple (or complex if you think about it) as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, work clothes cast off at the end of the day for sweatpants or an adjustment of your held opinions.

• Growth or decay (we wouldn’t have mushrooms without both working in harmony)
• New experiences to break up the monotony of life
• Opportunities to smile about things (or is not a smile a witnessed change to a persons face?
• Look at every moment like a new painting of the future.
• (Add your own additional bullet points here)

Change takes composure and patience to have the most impact with us. Both of which, I continually need more of. Change is not my ruler but I realize that it is the rule of this life.

Life's Plane Trip

"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams

My wife has been working very hard at understanding her person, the unique and special human being that she is. Why…I haven’t quite figured out. I find her already to be levels above me in emotional intelligence, intellectual intelligence and just simple goodness. If anyone should have an understanding of themselves I would have bet the bank it was her. Perhaps it is wrong to be the standard of measure for her. No, I know that is wrong and would be a self-centered attitude on my part to cultivate. But I believe it must come from the desire that lurks in our dark cellars that whispers that we are broken somehow and we need to be fixed.

It gives me a scratchy feeling that I am somehow wrong. Like a joke that might be a bit offensive (aren’t most jokes slightly offensive on some level?) and it leaves the teller or the listener a bit uncomfortable. That’s how life seems to strike me at times, strangely uncomfortable. Or leaves me feeling “comfortably numb” as the Pink Floyd song can be heard in the recesses of my mind. It makes me wonder what lies at the end of the universe; after all, doesn’t everything end? But in my mind that has only the five basic senses—touch, taste, sight, sound and smell—to process the reality that it faces, it withholds the greater mysteries that trouble me without answers.

When you roll a ball across a table, it reaches the edge, falls into a tangible space filled with air, till it strikes the ground. Then it may roll or bounce a bit until it comes to rest or encounters a wall or table leg where it will bounce off that or come to rest. Eventually when it has used all of its energy you will find it at rest against something substantial…in this example, the floor. There it will remain until a new force is added to it to begin moving again. Or, until it is picked up and set again on the table. Everything about it makes sense because it is processed by my available senses.

Now shoot a beam of light into space. It will travel through the distantness of that space…forever. Will it ever encounter the end of anything? The end of everything? And how can it reach the end of everything? At the end of everything is there something else? Einstein said something like it will eventually circle back and pass itself in time. In what I see—what I can process—there is always something following the last thing. When I was a kid, I repeatedly had a troubling dream about this stumbling question of forever. Infinity. That and another dream of a huge dinosaur coming towards my house with thundering footsteps of destruction. Oh, and then there was the dream of the shifting desert sands…

So my guess is that my wife is just learning how to land her plane better. I could use some help with that as well. Flying it better would also help. It seems to always land but some of the landings are rougher than others. And someday the flight may not have any ground under it and what a mystery will then unfold, more than likely opening up to a new sense that my human mind cannot comprehend on my human time of existence.

Every Thing

Well I recall his parting words
Must I accept his fate
Or take myself far from this place
I thought I heard a black bell toll
A little bird did sing
Man has no choice
When he wants every thing

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

Man goes beyond his own decision
Gets caught up in the mechanism
Of swindlers who act like kings
And brokers who break everything
The dark of night was swiftly fading
Close to the dawn of day
Why would I want him just to lose him again

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

--Lyrics from the song, "The Scarlet Tide" from the movie “Cold Mountain”

"Man has no choice, when he wants every thing."  What profound wisdom is in this snippet of a song lyric. Every thing, not everything. It is a subtle difference with huge meaning. Everything is a more loving way of using those 10 letters. It calls for an all-encompassing positive embrace of the world. Everyone, everyday, everywhere, everybody, and everything are all words of inclusion. When you separate the every from the other word you create what I believe is a greedy combination. You long to possess the every, now. Make it yours or make more of them for yourself.

Don’t move to fast to get every thing. A new car (even if it helps the economy), a fancy home, a better grade, a better job, all these things are great, but beware of what may arrive in your soul along with them. A higher payment may arrive, and you will sacrifice simple pleasures for the mere possession of them. You can let someone into your life that is poison just so there is someone, anyone, beside you.

Personally, I could have worked longer hours and achieved more success and money, but now I know what I achieved was no less wonderful, as my heart is filled with memories of the great times that I had and the beautiful people that surround me. How many smiles, laughter and sunsets would I have missed?

Remember what Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Alison Krauss will break your heart when she sings this song written by the incomparable Elvis Costello.

This is another great version, with Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings performing.