A Few Thoughts About Change

It’s been a banner week at my house, friends.

Major developments here. Really big. Game changer big.

The kind of exciting news that makes you wish there was some kind of celebratory card you could mail out to all your family and friends, like a birth announcement.

Or that you could get Batman to announce it for you, cause, well WHY wouldn’t you?? But because you do not, in fact know Batman, and that no such greeting card exists, you do what you have to do, and co opt your own blog to shout it to the world.

So shout it I will:

WE GOT A NEW BED.

Yep, after several years of heated negotiation and soul preparation, we took a major step in our married lives, and bought a new mattress.

Major big deal. I know. Let me give you a moment to take it in.

You only do this kind of thing once in a decade or so (or in our case once every 1.75 decades, but who’s counting?) I mean, I don’t want to tell you how long we had our old one… cause I don’t want any judgment here. So let’s just say it was several Spider-Mans ago.

That’s the thing about change. We say we want it. But do we really? I don’t think so. The effects of change? Oh, sure. But the process? Yeah, not so much. All that discomfort. All that lack of sameness, and therefore predictability. All that requirement to let go of the old and embrace the new.

Now maybe you’re different. Maybe you dig a life of serendipity. No routines for you, no sir. Free-spirited like the wind, that’s your style, I get it. “Bring that new adventure on!”, you say; mmmhmmm, I hear ya.

Oh, I hear ya.

Yeah, I used to be like you. Or at least I used to think I was like you. But the sad truth of it is I’ve come to the realization that I, the bring-it-on-bohemian, am in fact just another a creature of habit, a mere mortal.

It’s not that I don’t welcome change. Because I do, I really do! I am wired to embrace newness: new ideas, new scenery, new experiences. Love me some new! Even (and especially) the challenge of thinking on my feet, changing midstream, flying by the seat of my pants, all that there.

But there’s this inherent thing about change, this awful thing that has to happen when you embrace something new: You have to let go of the old.

Zing, indeed. Here’s the thing, every new thing requires letting go of the old thing. It’s just the way it works. And please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that we need to let go of all the old things, because that is a terrible, terrible idea. Time honored traditions, ageless wisdom, yeah we need to hold onto those things. And how. What I am saying though, is that every new thing, idea, or situation we encounter literally requires us to let go of an old thing, idea or ideal in order to fully embrace it. We can try to have it both ways, but that’s like trying to occupy two spaces at once. And if Rain Man taught us anything it’s that you can’t go back to Walbrook and stay with Charlie Babbitt, as much as we want to do both.

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It’s like being stuck in the middle, unable to really go back to the way it was, but also unable to fully embrace the way it is. Or could be. And that’s no way to live.

We needed a new mattress. The old one was good for the season that we had it. But it was time to say goodbye. Time for something new. And the new one is really good. Different. But good. And we can’t sleep on both. Cause that would be weird.

And who knows, maybe there’s some other grand analogy here for my life. Or yours, for that matter. In fact, all this is beginning to remind me about some thing in the Bible… Some thing about not putting new wine in old wineskins… or new mattresses on top of old mattresses…

Something like that.

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.”

Jesus

🤓🏝