Change is inevitable.

Is continuity too much to expect in lieu of the shifting sands of time?

Where we've been in life is not where we're going.

Like the Tom Wolfe novel, "You can't go home again." There are no dress rehearsals with life. We change. The world changes too. Nothing stays the same.

Still there's something to be said for continuity. It helps define our boundaries and borders, and brings congruity to disarray.

Leaving a cult was inevitable for me. It was a part of my maturing process. But I didn't lose my faith in God or trust in a higher power.

Well said, Amyjo...

There was a divide for me, between elementary school and junior high (and, from my perspective, it happened fairly suddenly), when it was like my ability to "see" what was REALLY going on (behind the scenes, or in depth) expanded dramatically.

What was apparently going on with the presenting surface appearance was--so OBVIOUSLY to me at this point--like a Halloween mask: No matter "what" the mask portrayed, I KNEW the reality of the person (or situation) behind that mask.

Once this inner process of maturation began, one of the things I have continued to be amazed by is how obscure the view ahead of us often appears...while, at the very same moment, the view "behind" us is so (at that point) step-by-step OBVIOUS!!!

OBVIOUSLY, "this" would not, and probably COULD not, have happened without "that" happening...and before that, something else equally important happening...and before THAT, something else even further back...

Yet, when I was able to remember what I was able to "see" when I WAS "back then," I had no idea what was, at that moment, the destination I actually [would have] wanted (if I had been prescient enough to know to ask for it!!!), several life-steps in front of me.

The "failures" of my earlier years were either actually necessary steps (preparing me in different ways for a future I literally could not imagine), or were corrections to get me back "on course" (because either I had not chosen optimally in the first place, or because my prep and learning time in that part of my life had come to its optimum end).

I look back at my life now, and if I could change anything I wanted, with what I know now, I would change ONLY one thing.

Everything else was steadily guiding me (sometimes kicking and hollering in protest, every step of the way!!!) towards the future I really wanted (even if I had no idea of where I was actually heading at the time).

On a societal level, I know that this doesn't always work--in fact, it frequently does NOT work.

Which is maybe the point: that this kind of positive evolutionary change depends on individual change, AS individuals--even if it takes a high number tipping point to positively affect a given society. (I am thinking Civil Rights Era, Vietnam War-type societal changes here.)

What I have discovered, at least in my own life, is that "the world changes...nothing stays the same," but there IS continuity, and boundaries, and borders, and congruence...

...and those things are most often composed, whether we are consciously aware of it or not, of the ever-evolving US.

Nice said Amyjo

True

M@t

Very true. When I was in college, I rather arrogantly believed that my thoughts, beliefs, capabilities, etc. were etched in stone. It was a shock in life to find out otherwise.

Bring on the change.
It's the only way to learn, grow, improve.

David Bowie sang it best,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPPSu0vaNWA

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Change is inevitable.


Except from a vending machine.

Got me there!

:D

Thomas Wolfe.

Tom Wolfe is a different writer. Bonfire of the Vanities, Electric Koolade Acid Test, etc.

People who knew Thomas Wolfe, the writer, called him Tom. Or Tommy, by his family.

Did you know him? (He died in 1938)

I read.

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Change is inevitable.
>
> .....
>
> But I didn't lose my lose my faith in God
> or trust in a higher power.
>

So change is inevitable except in cases where things don't change. Got it!

If I'm right, your main point is that "...some things change, some things don't..."

The one thing that has stayed constant for me has been my faith in god.

In fact my life experiences has led me to a deeper faith, not a weakening of it.

Got it. Change is NOT inevitable...

That is your sentiment, not mine.

Even God has change down to an art. He created it.

Amyjo Wrote:
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>
> Even God has change down to an art. He created it.


From the way you convey it, ghawd created change, and then he finally figured how to do it the best way possible.

Also, great come back on the Thomas/Tom Wolfe issue!! Proving again that change is definitely not inevitable.

Tom, Tommy, and Thomas are very interchangeable.

And a play on the same name.

Or as Benjamin Disraeli once said,

"Change is inevitable. Change is constant."

It is a given.

A stanza from Wallace Stevens' poem, "Sunday Morning":

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

That is a beautiful poem.