Thoughts on Change

 
We have a cluster of birthdays in our immediate and extended family at the beginning of each year. My husband had a milestone birthday yesterday which we celebrated with a meal inside a nice restaurant. Birthdays and anniversaries offer a time to reflect on our accomplishments and goals for the future. 

The Atlantic published an article on February 17, 2022, entitled The Seven Habits that Lead to Happiness in Old Age. It had the usual advice about healthy eating and exercise but included these three points which are quoted below.

• Practice your coping mechanisms now. The earlier you can find healthy ways to deal with life’s inevitable distresses, the more prepared you’ll be if ill-luck strikes in your 80s. This means working consciously...to avoid excessive rumination, unhealthy emotional reactions, or avoidance behaviour.
• Keep learning. More education leads to a more active mind in old age, and that means a longer, happier life...you simply need to engage in lifelong, purposive learning. For example, that can mean reading serious nonfiction as part of a routine to learn more about new subjects.
• Do the work to cultivate stable, long-term relationships now...The point is to find people with whom you can grow, whom you can count on, no matter what comes your way.

I would add that it is important to accept that life changes, and embracing change is essential to remaining relevant and emotionally healthy. We watched Disney's Peter Pan a couple of weeks ago, a movie which our children watched many times when they were young. The movie now carries a disclaimer, but I cringed at scenes that gave me no pause thirty years ago. Racism and sexism were not unusual in 1953 but, while they are still present, we are more aware of the damage this kind of behaviour has caused and the ongoing effects of marginalizing people on the basis of race and sex. 

A popular reflective exercise asks the question, "How have you changed in the past five years?"

Hopefully, we can all report that we have changed for the better in recent years. As I think back over the past ten years, I see how many major events in this time period have changed my attitudes and beliefs, sometimes stretching me painfully as I was forced to choose between old and new paradigms. 

Ten years ago, my mother was in her last year of life as she fought valiantly, medically and spiritually, to overcome her cancer diagnosis. My dad was diagnosed with a cruel and unrelenting progressive neurological disorder the same year, robbing him of his physical and cognitive abilities until his death in 2019. I started working on a specialized mental health unit in 2012 and gradually learned to see people who suffer from various psychiatric conditions with increased empathy and understanding. These experiences have been beneficial in giving me the confidence to talk to people about end-of-life and mental health issues. I had skilled mentors who guided me by example as I learned and practiced new ways of thinking.

There are other events in the past ten years that have changed me, many of them too personal and confidential to share publicly. I recognize that inner pride and know-it-all attitudes make it easy to quickly judge others without taking time to listen to their story. I continue to go through a deconstruction and reconstruction of my faith, exploring writings and voices outside of the camp I was born into while establishing meaningful spiritual disciplines. 

Nature shows us that change is inevitable and essential, bringing healthy growth and reproduction. Nature is very diverse, and so is humankind. Positive change and growth protect us from the rigidity of thought that can be as confining and repulsive as the physical rigour mortis of death. We all tend to hang out with like-minded people who share our personal views and biases. Positive change requires us to move outside our comfort zones to create bridges, not barriers between generations, other cultures, and schools of thought. 

Recommended reading:

Philip Yancey's most recent book, Where the Light Fell: A Memoir (2021), is an autobiographical account of a life of change. The author's religious background mirrors mine in many ways and he writes with grace and compassion about events that have changed and formed him. 

I don't know how long this link will remain active, but this essay by Milton Packer MD in Medscape Today is beautiful. It is titled Two Caterpillars in Love: The Science of Death and Resurrection.