Change

December 16, 2014

For several years when I was a child, my parents said, meaning to be funny, "Lena hates change."  I think most kids need a lot of predictability in their lives, which I got from my parents' habits and general mode of living but not from their moods.

I think I was in my late twenties when it occurred to me that how people perceive change has a lot to do with whether it is change they chose or not, and whether it is change they like or not.  Change happens at all paces, but it seems the quickest when it's something you don't want and the slowest when it's something you do want.

The way I have had to learn to deal with change is to try to get familiar with the nature and extent of whatever the change is, whether I like the change or not.  I have found that trying to create a situation that worked in the past usually just adds a memory of a bad experience to the memories of what I liked in the past and tried to duplicate.  I have also found that trying to be the person I was at times in the past that I remember as being happier than the present time usually makes me and other people unhappy.

Life deals out a lot of injuries to people.  If I did not believe in G-d, I would not be able to get through my life.  When you die, you lose everything that you had in life.  I try not to care too much about the things that I would be embarrassed to be thinking about in my last moments.  Whatever I leave when I die, I want it to be tangible but not material; the things that people are supposed to be working at all their lives to be and have.  I want to be a good person, which is, if the world is any indication, hard to do and the most important thing to do.  It's the only thing around which anyone can build his or her identity and that will never fail to be the right scaffold.

Copyright L. Kochman, December 16, 2014 @ 11:10 p.m.