There are things in life deemed fugacious. Durable. Dependable. Yet in the end a bolt loosens, a blade dulls and it’s off to the graveyard. Romances bloom and wilt. Children grow and leave. Careers soar and dip. Pop stars brighten and dim. Pets potty train then die. The dernier cri becomes goodwill goods. Nouvelle cuisine is bumped off by comfort food which previously was bumped off by fusion cuisine. Presidents are elected and leave in disgrace. Nations divide and conquer. Friends screw you over. Ironic endings are part of life.
In Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray you see how vanity cripples a person by refusing to surrender to the changes caused by time. In To Kill a Mockingbird, you see how change can unite and divide people. In Les Miserables you see the changing faces of love. In every part of our lives whether it is vice, virtue, emotions, sentiments or relationships, nothing stands still. Botox can only stop lines which are skin deep but apart from that the pendulum sways and so does life. I could go on and on about how change is really the only undeviating element in our lives. But let’s change the topic.
There are things we want to change but can’t. Like an awful drinking habit, sucking on cigarettes the whole day, eating pork fat when no one is looking, kicking off insomnia, gossiping, littering on the sidewalk, finding explicatives to be part of everyday vocabulary, slurping your soup, finding pictures of corpses fascinating, surfing through morbid websites at ungodly hours of the night and maybe just laughing and caring about all the wrong things. I know things about myself that give me the creeps. And I know that many people know things about themselves that creep them out. Denial is finite if you still claim to be sane. Yet as we all know these things, these senseless and unhealthy urges that prevent us from being in the likeness of our Creator, they continue to be part of who we are.
Then there are things that change even if we try so hard to do your mean veer away from them. Think of the canicular memories of a childhood summer that is now replaced by a season-less year of climbing the corporate ladder, finding out that the man you fell in love is not the same man anymore, your parents who were your heroes and who you thought possessed antaean powers disappointing you, finding out there is no Santa, finding out red meat is bad for you, junking junk food to be attractive, finding out what men really want and finding out that love is always not forever.
It’s easy to surmise that change will never work for you. It changes things that make life great. It ignores the very things that you want to ignore as well. In this world we are given badges that dictate our powers. Change may aggrandize your situation or let it swim in a sea of loss. To be the weeping willow, the great wounded doe of the unexpected is not the fault of change.
In science one learns that you adapt to your surrounding through homeostasis. Your physical bearings acclimate to the environment to ensure that you survive. This happens to the dumbest of animals and to the dumbest of people. Dumb people survive, in the manner of TV’s Survivor participants but without the cash, fame and Playboy cover. They live in a shameful manner grateful for scraps and tidbits. They live not knowing what they deserve. Of course knowing your merits only comes from earning a particular strength that can only come from the efforts of fighting the natural urge to be a dumbass. It’s easy to surrender and sing que sera sera on a volatile afternoon. It’s easy to wave that white flag and let your environment and surroundings eat you up alive. It’s easy being easy, but easy is not really easy to live with.
Robert Frost, the Larry Flynt of the lost but introspective youth, has encouraged us to take the road less traveled. It is a place where your visa for change is stamped and approved. Going against the grain, letting go, accepting certain truths that’s the gift and curse of change. And maybe, just maybe if you’re OK with this then the drinking habit and ardent cigarette sucking may just go away.