Everything changes. Whether a change is through physical forces or a shift in perspective, nothing can resist change. Analysis of change is our primary thought process. All processes, models, and systems that humans have constructed are used to track, manage, increase, or halt change. We track change because our survival depends on it, as we track the changing seasons to know when crops are ready to harvest.
While there are countless ways something can change, we pray for things to change for the better. In theory, conservative politicians advocate that they have already established the best sociopolitical framework. Supporters of conservatism consider modern society to be surfing the wave of human possibilities. This is their utopia, here and today. The most important books have already been written and must simply be followed. The methods we have in place are the best suited to deal with undesirable changes. For a conservative, change outside of expected parameters is synonymous with revolution. Bizarrely, conservatives project repressed personal change into the environment. The conservative does not change, but they force the surrounding environment to buckle and change at an opposing rate. To maintain an affluent individualistic model, all life on earth is compromised and undergoes intense destruction and development. Meanwhile, under their model, any change that occurs outside their framework is resisted. Conservatism does not stop change, as one might assume from the definition, it restricts it to certain ideological parameters. Change is always occurring, incredibly rapidly, under the rule of conservatives.
All people fear radical change, imagining that it will decrease their access to a life with security. And yet, only those that are happy with the conditions of their life will openly resist change. Socially we work together to ensure the stability of each other’s habits. While we may recognize that change is normal for anyone, we still resist it. We might see that a baby changes into an adult and accept that it happens. And yet, there are many who resist even this basic tenet of individual growth. Change, on an individual and social level, is something we must coax each other to take part in. We must coax each other into change because our current perception of how human life and change are interwoven is limited. We absorb our expectations of life from storytelling, not plainly through observation. Most of our commonly told stories characterise only a small representation of what change can be.
One of the most popular modern forms of storytelling is the ‘hero’s journey’. Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon has pushed this template through his self described ‘story circle’. The story circle is:
- A character is in a zone of comfort,
- But they want something.
- They enter an unfamiliar situation,
- Adapt to it,
- Get what they wanted,
- Pay a heavy price for it,
- Then return to their familiar situation,
- Having changed.
We can only wish that change only comes to us as an interim in our existing comforts. That the change itself does not deny us all that we already possess. If we can have it all, and also the brutal validation of a ‘change’ event, with no long-lasting consequences for our possessions then we can be happy. We can be happy because we get what we want, our craving of change, without true sacrifice. It is to have 100% of our life accounted for and then to seek a higher, temporary plateau. It is desirable to experience change as a well-controlled temporary state.
Some people, who are forced into change, never fully recover. A part of them does not accept that their life is different. Whether by nostalgia or rigidness, they attach to the absence of what they lose or no longer fits into their self or environment. Change is inevitable and to survive a person must adapt. Being unable to adapt, the individual falls out of rhythm with life and their ideas become neurotic. A person made redundant from technological change can either upskill or find themselves constantly searching from a shrinking pool of opportunity. Where this person might enjoy a new life, fresh and difficult, they instead choose the difficulty of becoming irrelevant.
Whether a society or an individual, change is most effective in absence. There must be a lacking or the perception of absence. An individual may be surrounded by all the comforts of their life and not be able to shake the itch that all things are not in the right place. Frustration, developed through an awareness of absence, motivates change, for it inspires great discomfort in the individual. Once we desire change, we must then pay the price for it.
All change comes at a price. The price is always a sacrifice. It is to cut ties with something that we attach to. The greater the attachment, the greater the change. A father may love his family and still leave them behind. Change is not always positive, and yet the father ceases to be all the ideas of a father and becomes something different. The father is now someone who abandoned people who need them. The father is stigmatised, and no longer afforded the societal benefit of fatherhood. He is an absent parent and can no longer lean on the love of children. His life moving forward becomes open to their own decisions and choices. Every opportunity, except that of returning, is there. They make this very sacrifice for the opportunity of something new.
A sacrifice is a form of fertiliser. It breaks down obligation, comfort, love, hate, attachment etc. and offers a space for something new to grow. Some sacrifices occur over a lifetime. A ripe example is the career of an ambition individual. The moment that they tear away space for themselves to succeed, surpassing, and displacing other individuals they doom themselves to one day destroy their own creation. They must one day, either by force or choice, step aside for the next generation. Impermanence is a fundamental tenet of conscious change. Nothing lasts forever, and thus what is created must one day be sacrificed for something new to occur. One always has the option to sacrifice, rather than to be forced to the pyre by others.
We must change or die. We can do both and yet we mostly do one or the other. We can even stave off death by changing, we can renew our metaphysical garden by pruning, clearing, and planting new ideas. But, regardless of our efforts, change will inevitably overcome all personal efforts. The individual is both the ocean and the moon. Affected by and affecting the world around. And as an individual, we can move with the rhythms of personal change and still feel isolated or bombarded by external forces. Change manifesting as both a concept and a force is deeply pervasive and unstoppable.
Change is natural, constant, and reliable. When discussing reliability the most common example is that the sun will rise and set each day and yet, that all things change is a stronger example. On an individual level, a person enjoys great benefits from acknowledging change as a pervasive and fundamental element of life. This person is more willing to personal sacrifices and more forgiving of the world. Only ideas and stories can protect us from the brutality of change. In the tangible world, we are constantly being pulled into a dance with change, leading and following its movements. If we are to have any hope of mastering this dance, we must first accept that it takes two to tango. We accept that change happens to us, and in turn, we become change.