Welcome, changes....

That doesn't even sound like me, does it? I have had a thoughtful five days to contemplate, create, muse, and even nap.  I have, traditionally never liked change.  I learned as a teen the name for this kind of thinking was reactionary.  Yes, how could I not see the connection?  Reactionary is a perfect, perfect name for the ones of us who do not enjoy altering our futures for any reason.  We do not create.  We react.  Life brims with change...  One thing follows another in a procession of shifts and dynamics.  Th daily round rarely ends just at the beginning.  In fact, life more or less spirals, each day hinging on the last, but never wavering too much, drifting either toward the top or the deplorable plunge...

Reactionaries dread the changes in life because we do not cause them.  Our changes usually ARE sad because they are the changes caused by breaking, death, illness, catastrophe, and loss.  Those who enjoy change do not mourn the old ways because they intentionally, yes, on purpose, turned away from that path and chose another.  This is the pathway to peace as we grow up...  I can think of multitudes of changes that should have been good.  Yet, in my typical, fearing demeanor I have refused the joy because I chose to hang on to that past.  In my driveway at home a red Thunderbird, a scarlet Camaro,and a silver Intrepid slowly rust to the ground.  Why?  They ceased to function.  We purchased other cars to transport us, but we couldn't bring ourselves to make that cut, junk those memories with the chassis of yesterday....  And so they sit, blocking our vista with reminders and impeding the future as weeds mingle with their wheels...

New shoes go in the closet while absolutely reproachable ones sit handily by the door...  Mom's old stove slipped to the back porch to soften her heartbreak of giving up the stove she and Daddy bought together to begin their lifetime of happy meals, marriage, and events. The new gradually works itself in, but without a change and a parting, it will just sit atop the rubbish, precariously balanced on the past...

Can a person choose to change this most integral facet of her own character?  If I don't, I see my future as a series of scramblings toward survival.  No choices, just defensive maneuvers to survive;  life becomes a game of chess played from the viewpoint of protecting the king without risking the attack that might win the game...  We prolong the play, but we cannot be the victor if we never, ever march toward the offensive and map strategy to alter our futures with positive direction.

And to live with a dear, dear, fearful-of-the-future mother....  To be followed generationally by a son who mandates things remain exactly the same...  Even to the point of not moving the tools my dad left sitting by the barn door...

The end of The Great Gatsby says, "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into our past.."  Hopeful, yet pessimistic.

So here I am.  School is bringing on the pressure. Life beings me burdens in the form of health issues, money problems, and so on...  Mom is from a different, stronger generation.  She knows she is right.  My son knows he is right.  I am that silly, willy, nilly peacemaker generation who tries to negotiate the river without any wake, without any steam, without a paddle or a rudder...  I'm drifting.  Some of my friends are the same.  Others have seen the light and are casting ballast overboard to make a different lifestyle.

On this sunny November morning, I am setting up to make my own changes.