Making Sense

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~ Alan Watts

Most of us do not like changes. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we cannot do anything about that. Change will come. That is something that will not change.

I have had many changes in my life. Although I do not think of myself as a person that relishes changes, my record of accomplishment would say otherwise. If I were a person who was not open to changes, I would still be living with my parents on a small Midwestern farm. Although part of me finds that idea appealing, the reality of it is insane.

If I had chosen a different career path, I might have been a professor of history. Every choice we make is an invitation to change. Every choice we make has consequences that ripple out like the concentric circles on a calm lake.

I think Allan Watts, the British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience is right.  The way to make sense of it all is to take in the change, absorb it, go with the flow and learn to dance with it. I guess you could say we have no choice. We can sit back, ignore what is going on, and forget about this change business and keep everything the way it was fifty years ago.

Believe me, that is a prescription for disaster. If you do not live within the flow, you eventually realize your despair, and give up. That is the day you die.  Henry David Thoreau once said, “Things do not change; we change.” I believe that wholeheartedly. I am living proof of it.