Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει
Yeah, it's Greek to me, too, but I know it's from Heraclitus, and I think it expresses his well-known maxim that the only constant is change.
I'm not a person who likes change, but I can't say I've ever met anyone who does. I know some people who cope with change better than others, but I've certainly had a lot of late-night, heart-to-heart conversations with friends who were facing uncomfortable changes in their lives and needed to talk. I wonder if it's not so much the change we dislike, as the lack of control over what's going to change and when. There are times when people embrace change, for example, in the form of self-improvement, especially when it's self-initiated. And there's that slow and steady kind of change that takes time, sometimes years, to perceive. That's usually not as traumatic when it's happening, but it can be hard when you finally see what's happened.
All of this is on my mind today, because a friend of mine posted a picture of me, taken in high school, on facebook. I remember when it was taken, but I haven't seen it in 30 years. It was a bit of a shock to be confronted with my younger self that way. I realized that, in some ways, I still imagine myself as that girl; despite the fact that so much has changed since then, something elemental has also remained constant.
Change, generally I try to embrace it, but it is hard. I know I went crazy when I was on Twitter and Flock was my web browser and the update version of FLock did away with my People sidebar. I went CRAZY. Doesn't sound so important, but it breaks your usual flow and that's disconcerting.
ReplyDeleteBonnie
I'm thinking about this post now..that's a good thing Tracey.
Interesting that two slicers posted about Facebook yesterday!
ReplyDeleteI, too, have a perception of myself that is of a much younger me. Not high school, but my mid-twenties. I still think of myself as being very much like that very young woman ... but I am really not like her, have changed in so many ways.
Change can be so odd. Even good changes can create crisis when they first come about.