Change by Jamie Kirkpatrick

Back to school. Leaf fall. Sere cornstalks. Slant of light. It’s a time of change, a time for change.

Once upon a time, I was a much freer spirit than I am now, but aging changes everything. Now, I’m finding change difficult. Instead of spontaneity, now I opt for consistency. One thing at a time, please, and if something must change, please, dear God, make it gradual and easy to tolerate. Maybe that’s why I like seasonal change, in whatever form it takes and whenever it comes. Seasonal change is rarely abrupt; it tends to creep up on us slowly and regularly, part of the much larger circle of life which effectively makes it change and unchanged at the same time. 

Small changes are tweaks. Momentous changes can be transformational. But time is constantly changing, whether you’re counting in seasons or years. No two moments are ever really alike, no matter how much we may think so. We’re constantly moving through space and time so, by definition, we’re creatures of change, not consistency. Stasis is just not in our DNA. Stability and balance are mere illusions. Life is evolutionary. Suspended animation is fictional. The river never stops flowing.

In ancient Greece, “stasis” referred to civil strife or political deadlock within a city-state. Sound familiar? All eyes are focused on the coming midterm elections, but no matter who wins or loses, our strife and deadlock will not be the same. Count on it: things will change.

But I digress. What I’m exploring here is the phenomenon of change, whether divine or evolutionary or simply mutatio gratia mutationis, what Caesar may have called “change for the sake of change.” You may recall that I like the simplicity and accessibility of Robert Frost’s poetry. I’ve shared “Nothing Gold Can Stay” with you before, but it’s worth sharing again:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

We all know that when it rains, it pours. That’s how the last few weeks have seemed to me: I’ve been swamped, inundated, overwhelmed, and deluged with unexpected news and events, some good and some less than good. But just when I feel like I’m foundering, I watch another leaf fall off the sycamore that overlooks our front porch, and I tell myself to just keep breathing because things will change again. As much as I might wish to stop this mad, mad world from spinning our of control, I’m reminded that nothing gold can stay, nor, for that matter, can something far less than gold. We live on one of those moving stairways that one sees in an airport: even when we’re standing still, we’re moving through our days together.

There have been moments in my life—in yours, too, I’m sure—when I’ve encountered something close to perfection and I say to myself, “I wish it would stay this way forever.” But that’s iron pyrite—fool’s gold. We’re human and that means change is relentless in both good and bad ways. That’s the hand we were dealt, so let’s play it the best we can.

And as for the midterm elections, they will come and go, but the work and duty of living and loving one another goes on forever. 

I’ll be right back.