CHANGE AND ADAPTATION

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
- Stephen Hawking

In our very topsy-turvy world each day brings change.  One pronouncement, one economic twitch and one natural disaster and whole sections of the earth shudder.  We are very prone to react, and really do need to remember the basic rule of change. That is stay loose so you don’t fall and hurt yourself.

Change is dynamic and shoots through our lives quickly or in groaning slow motion.  We understand that adaptation prevents our personal extinction, and that change itself must be expected.

Each New Year we map our course, consider our options and open our hearts to a new improved state of being.  Change must be measured and realistic. I for one do not want to live The Third Wave. Alvin Toffler in describing all those things which are happening now described a changed society where corporations will collapse into each other, currency will become meaningless, and small pods and communities will survive on ingenuity and cottage industry.  I don’t think there will be a lot of demand for someone to write copy about rocks and onions. I could see myself doing hut makeovers or cave drawings, but I am really not sure where that leaves my best friend who is a pianist, or my cousin who is a therapist. I guess the early versions of these careers were drum banger and shaman, or priest. The adaptation here could  be that the drummer would develop ceremonial ritual and get paid in potatoes, while the shaman would whip people up into ritualistic frenzy and then convince everyone that, unless he got a supply of potatoes, evil spirits would take over.  De rigeur, the two of them would survive quite nicely once crop diversity was established.

Since there would be no more plastic surgery, fat people would stay fat, and a universally approved slathering of mud and paint would even the playing field for the less attractive in the tiny pod tribe.

As always there would be an accountant – a bean and potato counter. A lawyer or tribal elder who encouraged everyone to get along and counselled on the benefits of stable relationships with neighbours and family. Keep those potatoes in one place.

The inevitability of change is that it does not stand static. Change begets change.  In our current state we know that enormous cultural and economic upheaval is only a few years away.  How can we prepare?  Truly, we cannot prepare but in our hearts and with our courage.  We are a species who possess understanding and a psychic and spiritual connectedness with our place and our fellows.  Survivors of the depression and other tumult caused by scoundrels or politics or both had one thing to say.

They survived by thinking of what tomorrow might bring. They prospered in better times because of resolve and power borne of hardship.  We are the champions my friend.  Freddy Mercury of Queen had it right…don’t think for a moment that you will be towed under by circumstance, know that you will walk away from it with a more powerful heart and a durability that will supercede any challenge.

Spirit has fifty times the strength and staying-power of brawn and muscle”
- Mark Twain