Ch ch ch changes

Truth be told, I am someone who fears change. Even good change. It's a scary place, the unknown. A place where people and things and words and situations may not be all that they seem. A place where I am not in control. A place where anything could happen and it's not predictable.

Change is always a constant part of life. On a cellular level, the structure of the brain changes every time you learn something, a new connection is made in the neural network that makes up your conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings. On a macro level, as we age things on and in our bodies deteriorate as we walk towards the inevitable. On a day to day level, no two days are ever exactly alike, no person is exactly the same from one day to the next. We are each a moving cog in a vast layout of moving, turning, sea of humanity.

We crave order, ritual, routine, patterns in a world where change is the only true constant. It's how we make sense of what is around us. Math is essentially sequences in different permutations. Chemistry is a repeating pattern of atoms that follow an order. Physics is waves and particles, behaving in an orderly fashion in the context they are in. The fundamentals of life are inherently ordered and yet our everyday experience is anything but. Simple things can affect the whole day, how many of you hunt your keys each morning, or snooze your alarm? How many of you run out of milk, forget to post a letter, get to work having forgotten something? Exchange words in texts, emails, face-to-face where subtle nuances change how you hear the words.

So we create structure. In diaries and calendars and planning. We feel safe with it. Yet when an environmental factor shifts a degree out of position, the whole whole thing can fall apart. We do the same things, on the same days, with the same people because there is safety in what we know. 

Familiarity breeds contempt, a failure to see, to notice, to act. So the little girl who comes to school each day and doesn't speak - she's just shy. The boy who hits others is just boisterous. The girl who answers back is just cheeky, the boy who goes to the bathroom immediately after he eats has a weak stomach. The young woman who doesn't make eye contact is rude, the man who snaps at everyone is authoritarian. But nobody sees what lies beneath. The truth, the reasons. If we change the question, the way we listen, everything would change. Who has the strength to stand up, be counted, speak out, be the change?

But if you do, everything changes. It takes a strength of epic proportions to risk everything you know, the people, places, things, words, on change. It's possible to avoid, but then misery builds, anger, frustration, apathy, resentment, bitterness. So which is the lesser of two evils? Change or no change?