Changes

Can we protect ourselves?

First, I would like to start off by acknowledging the senseless tragedy which occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday. I cannot fathom the devastation experienced by the families and friends of those who were killed, and can only imagine the pain they must feel. I offer my condolences and my prayers.

Likewise, I cannot put myself into the tortured and unstable mind of someone who would commit such a horrendous act of violence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine any circumstances which would lead a person to kill another, let alone over thirty fellow humans.

I take no comfort in knowing that the killer took his own life, for all life is precious. I offer my sympathy and prayers to his family in their grief and anguish.

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What is YOUR greatest fear?

Mine is the unknown. It scares the snot out of me, to be honest. Oh, I know all the arguments against this type of fear… but still, facing the unknown scares me.

About twenty years ago, not long after I first moved to S. Ontario, some friends and I went to Canada’s Wonderland. I had never been there before, although I had passed by it many times. My friends were, as many are, somewhat fanatical about the roller coasters, and tried desperately to entice me to join them. Instead, I volunteered to watch their 4-year-old while they went on the rides.

I had only been on one roller coaster before, a very small one at the midway when I was about six. By the second time around I was screaming for it to stop so I could get off! So when my friends wanted me to climb onto some of the gigantic coasters at Wonderland, I had only that one not-so-good memory on which to base my decision.

To make a long story short, I was convinced to take their daughter onto the "Ghoster Coaster" in the kiddie end of the park. I almost soiled myself when we started to move, but then… we were over the first incline and… IT WAS FUN! I had spent most of the day being afraid to try the ride, and now I was disappointed that I hadn’t tried it sooner!

My own life has been a series of changes from almost as far back as I can remember: different homes, different schools, and different jobs. I’ve lived in five different cities.

So, you’d think, having been through so much change, that I wouldn’t fear the unknown, but I do. I get complacent with my situation, even if I’m sometimes not particularly happy with it. Some find adventure in not knowing what’s coming, but I think most of us find a great deal of comfort with the familiar.

Closely related to fear of the unknown is fear of change. Change may be inevitable, but we don’t always know what change will bring us, and that can be scary.

Funnily enough, I’m not as afraid of change as I am the unknown.

The other side of the coin is that we do adapt to change, however reluctantly, and often without realizing we have done so. Suddenly what we once objected to has become the norm.

I remember the rotary dial phone, and when ‘touch-tone’ dialling was introduced. Have you ever tried telling someone under the age of 20 how you only had ONE phone in the house, and it was attached to the wall in the kitchen?

How did we keep in touch with family and friends fifteen years ago, before e-mail was so readily available? When was the last time you took pen in hand and wrote a letter?

In the words of that great poet, Bob Dylan, "the times, they are a-changin’!"

There’s another old saying that "Life is a journey, not a destination." If life was a destination, we could arrive and be done with traveling. But that is not the case. Life isn’t sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch and watching the world pass us by. Life is about being a part of the journey, where we may pause from time to time, but never completely stand still. Life, like time, marches inexorably onward.

Life’s onward march is going to inevitably bring about further change.

We can’t know what the future will bring us. Even guessing seems pointless. Remember how far-fetched everything seemed on the original Star Trek series?

The only thing I am sure of is that however idealized and romantic our notions of how things may have been "in the good old days," we can’t go back, and neither can we stop change from occurring.

The best we can do is to hope that we can adapt.