Change One Thing is the name of a book you don’t have to
read. The title tells you
everything. Oh, you mean if I
brush my teeth starting right to left instead of left to right, all the
molecules in my makeup will shift and start a domino sequence and I’ll be a
different person with different experiences and nothing will be the same in
this dusty overheated house?
Yep. That’s pretty much it.
Hmmm. I could
almost buy that idea because I believe in causality. If you do something different, your inner dopey baby sits up
and fusses for a long time but finally it gives up and goes to sleep.
Here’s the thing about change: it’s shy and shrinks back.
You won’t notice anything unless you keep a detailed diary and track
your behavior. One day, you are
living a different life and it seems natural not some seismic personal restructuring
like St. Paul experienced on the Damascus Road.
Does change automatically outpicture your wish list? If you’re like me you won’t remember
what you wished for yesterday. It’s hard to decide what you want unless it’s specific like a
better respiratory experience or a working light at the top of the basement
stairs. Before I got up this morning I tried to dig up what I really wanted and could not come up with anything. Maybe a new mattress. Maybe you'd like a different state of mind, I coaxed. No, I like my muddled state of mind. It clears up once in a while. Maybe more success? No, I'm sick of success.
There was a line in a poem by Carl Sandberg that used to be
my favorite. “I’m a sucker for things the
way they are.” Now I know that’s
a mean thing to say, Carl. You have to fight thoughts like that. I’m not an ingénue anymore. The sentiment sounds ironic and fey but
it’s time to park the irony at the door and look at your life circumstances
with grown up convictions and grown up expectations. Really?
Another snippet of poetry that stuck to me like a barnacle
and became my mantra for a few years: “Like
everyone else I am being tortured to death.” This thought might have some
traction if we believe that life’s entire struggle for everyone is overcoming
childhood. Or even before
childhood - at the distribution of the dna that made our future a done deal.
Today, as I sit writing this post, I choose to believe that life as a struggle is an irrelevant idea. “Struggle” is just
another word. Start brushing your
teeth from a different starting point and see if anything happens.
Hey, as I’m about to close I realize that one year ago I
wouldn’t have parted with irony for all the happiness in the world.
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