In our lives, the only constant is change. The physical world around us, down to the subatomic level, is constantly in motion and change, often on a scale that our human senses are unable to perceive. We change too, minute by minute, we grow older and change. It’s inevitable.
But it’s not just us and our physical world that is constantly changing. Society: language, culture, and customs, as well as the bureaucratic organizations around us, are also in a state of constant flux and change. These changes can be glacial, so slow that in one person’s lifetime, they are not noticed; or at a faster clip, like a flash of lightning accompanied by a thunderclap.
One day, it’s one thing, and the next day, it’s something entirely different. Take language, for instance. When I was a child, grass and weed referred to two organic items associated with yards. One, grass, was desirable, while the other, weed, provoked the purchase of pesticides to rid ourselves of it.
Then, at some point in my life, both words became associated with psychotropic elements that were all the rage with certain age groups, and roundly feared and hated by others.
A change of the kind mentioned above can be unsettling, requiring significant adjustments. Humans, after all, seem hardwired to prefer constancy. But we manage. That is, most of us manage. There are some people, though, for whom change, even for the better, is anathema. People like a colleague of mine in the 1970s, when I served as a soldier in Korea. An Air Force officer, he once said that he joined the Air Force because he wanted an environment that never changed. It was useless to try to convince him that he’d joined the military service that changed more often and rapidly than any of the others.
Even the Navy, which is the most hidebound of the military services, changes, as hard as it tries sometimes not to. Witness the trauma of introducing airplanes to the Navy in the period after World War I. Seagoing navy personnel fought it tooth and nail until World War II demonstrated the value of the aircraft carrier.
Change is just hard to deal with for some people. However, even harder is the rest of us having to deal with people who resist change. Whether it’s a personal relationship, and having to listen to the carping of a significant other after the local market raises prices or stops stocking her favorite brand.
Or worse, the manufacturer stops producing her favorite brand. Or the politician who longs for a return to the times of his youth—or even a time before he was born—who enacts ill-conceived policies in an attempt to go back in time. Living with such people can cause you to want to scratch your own eyes out—or theirs.
The only way to survive such people is to do your best not to let them get under your skin. In personal relationships, if you know a change has been made before they find out, let them know before they encounter it. It won’t stop their bickering, but it will moderate it a smidgen. As for the politicians or bureaucrats who have this condition, protest vocally and often when they try to ram retrogressive policies down your throat. Join with like-minded people to build an audience of opposition.
Other than that, you can do little but wait for the next election and hope that enough people share your views, so that you can send the politician packing. As for the bureaucrat. If you’re above them in the pecking order, you can have a chat with them; if they’re above you, you can dust off your resume and go job hunting.
Good luck and good journey. | NWI
