It’s not for everybody, I know. Some people want to stay exactly as they are. They hope everything will remain the same, just as it is, constant.
Except that nothing is constant, change is happening all the time. The more you try and keep things just the way they are, the more they seem to shift and move. This includes us, and those around us, including those we love. Relationships have to be resilient enough to cope with this, or they become dysfunctional We change, things change, others change. It’s in the nature of Life.
It can be tough, but there it is!
Understanding it and accepting it brings freedom. Resisting it brings discomfort, and sadly in some cases, pain.
Change is a constant, it doesn’t have to be a threat.
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For sure, there is nothing more certain than change; but, equally, change can be reverted as in the cycle of the seasons and the growth of seed to flower although never quite the same seed and never quite the same flower and Heraclitus observed that we never step twice into the same river. Experiencing change does not mean that nothing is retained: some say (Brian Cox even) that everything is ‘out there’ somewhere; psychological difficulty arises, perhaps, if we spend too long in search of it and overlook that the past is already part of the present. Change, phenomenologically, is experienced as a series of events or memories but life is actually a continuum through time; what we tend to hang on to and what can cause grief or happiness are those memories which we translate as if they were the whole experience.
Philo
Thanks Philo, I couldn’t have put it better myself. So change is constant AND recursive (although if a situation is happening somewhere else at the same time does that mean it’s not changing really)?
I’m glad my response was of some interest but, in the cold light of an English summer’s day, the discussion seems philosophical and perhaps not of much psychological application. However, I am happy to continue, if only for a change.
As you put it, change is both constant and recursive; from one perspective, an event which changes, or, indeed, any event, is unique and therefore cannot be said to exist somewhere else as a matter of logic: a is not b. Cox’s view that nothing ever disappears and so exists eternally could suggest, however, that change is indeed recursive but also ultimately unchanging or unchanged. That is the paradox of change.
These philosophical speculations aside (but not dismissed), I have often been occupied with the question of the rate of change (psychological). A little introspection has sometimes ‘shown’ that change is always sudden, not gradual; but, then, one asks how sudden change has occurred if not slowly. To be sure, I think there are actions which effect change suddenly but their arrival is often slow – and painfully so.
What various therapies offer is the means to manage sudden change – decision-making – through a process slow…well, here, you take your choice – perhaps consideration, revelation, assimilation, integration, self-discovery, psycho-analysis…
Philo