Changes

Last week someone sent me a link to a youtube video that featured the song by the Eagles, called "New York Minute". It's a video made by some young people and was interspersed with many images, including a clock and a changing table. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoqLQ1ga1QM

I thought about the changes we go through…some minor, and others causing upheaval for us and for many around us…and some forced upon us by others or by circumstances beyond our control. Some changes start out as seemingly minor, yet as we ponder we realize that even a “minor” thing has some far-reaching consequences and can remind us of our mortality.

Last week I had a chat with my mother. I talk to her several times a week, sometimes a couple of times a day. It was a small comment, but it harbored those far-reaching consequences I just mentioned. I was to pick her up for a family event, and she asked if we could stop at the store on the way. Of course, I said. She went on to say driving is making her nervous…more so than before. I paid little attention at the time, but the significance came later, with the realization that her driving days may soon be over.

Many of us take for granted our ability to get into a car and drive anywhere we want, anytime and with anyone. Yet for my mother it represents mobility and freedom, and one more thing to which she can thumb her nose at so-called old age. After all, she is a young 86-year-old who still prides herself that she can mow her back lawn…albeit takes a couple of days.

Yet changes come upon us suddenly and sometimes very softly. So softly that we miss those harbingers of more significant changes…and the passages of life we don’t want to think about.

How do we respond to those changes? How do you? Is your tendency one of which to avoid thinking of it, hoping that perhaps we won’t need to face the inevitable? Or do you face it head-on? Do you then blindly accept and adapt, or scream an emphatic NO!

It was the softness of my mother’s comment that gave me pause. I don’t know if she has accepted it yet…or if she needs to right away. This will be the fodder of more discussions later, but the lesson I learned…or perhaps am trying to learn…is that changes occur, regardless of what we want or if we are ready.