The Only Constant Is Change

There have been too many changes in my life for comfort. Now I should mention that I believe that confort is vastly overrated. Comfort can become be an insidious way of becoming stagnant and refusing to grow.

Back to me, because this blog is really all about me. Eight years ago I contracted throat cancer even though I had never smoked or used tobacco products. I have survived the cancer and am learning to negotiate the changes that the treatment have produced in my body, mind, and spirit. I lost all of my bottom teeth and now I cannot eat or drink anything. All of my nutrition comes through a tube in my belly.

I thought I was doing fairly well with all of these changes. If not really placidly accepting them, at least I was tolerating them and trying to make the best of the situation. But then time happened and more changes.

The minister at my church, who I just love to death, is leaving us. Also the Church administrator, a very dear friend who is directly responsible for my discovery that I am a storyteller is also leaving. There must be some reasonable limit to the amount and rapidity with which the average person is forced to change ... and I am decidedly below average!

I am a student of Buddhism and one of the tenets by which I try and structure my life is to "be here now." Be present just where I am in this moment, every moment. From that perspective things can start to make sense. Not because there is less change or the change is more pleasant, but because one realizes that everything in temporary and subject to change.

We risk at least as much, if not more, physical, mental, and emotional trauma from cultivating an attitude that resists change and holds on too tenaciously to what is comfortable as we do from experiencing the change itself. We even hold on to that which is harmful, that we know is harmful, just because it is familiar and comfortable.

No growth or progress in this journey happens without change. And from that perspective I may need to admit that change is a good thing and that a lot of change is just a lot of good things. I may need to relinquish my fear of change and embrace the moment, this moment, every moment.

I'll work on that.