If you know Jack, you know I don’t embrace change, I don’t even shake hands with it. Like the man from La Mancha, I tend to throw on my armor, mount my trusty steed, and ride off to fight the giants. Often times I return from the battle in the same condition he did. Which is not to say I don’t change.
I don’t hate change, but neither do I worship it as some do. I do not blindly accept that the latest is, of necessity, the greatest. More often than not, it seems the latest is a more convoluted means to the same end. The latest update to my computer usually requires me to take three steps to accomplish what took one step the “old school” way. That makes some sense when you think of modern grade school math.
My children used to complain that all the cars I drove were “dirt” colors. There was a reason for that. Have you seen my present car? A hyper-green Jeep. There’s a reason for that change. I no longer care as much about having to wash the car as I do finding where I parked it. I call that a positive change.
Positive change serves a need, but more than that, it maintains freedom while doing so. I don’t have to drive a bright green car, I choose to. If whatever Gen-letter we’re on now wants to walk a block to cross the street, fine. Why forbid me to jaywalk if I want to?
I’ve seen huge changes in my life some are blessings, some curses, and others are no real change at all. When I was a boy, a man from the dairy would come to our house and leave milk, cheese, and butter. We got away from that—or did we? Now it’s a person from a chain store delivering goods made God knows where delivers them to the door. Which brings to mind an old saying. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The truth expressed in that old saw is fundamental. While individual human beings are capable of change, the species is not. We have new devices and new technologies. Only the naïve, and the willingly ignorant, truly believe we have new ways of thinking or behaving. When it comes to people, there is nothing new under the sun.
Maranatha
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