Monday Musings...

Change...

    Like the characters in stories, the ones we read or the ones we write, it's always about change. We are introduced to the character in the moment of their great change, when their entire world has fallen apart and they are vulnerable, broken, shattered in the inside. And throughout the story we travel with them as they find strength and possibly faith to carry forth from the depths of their despair and find a level of happiness suitable to the type of story we are reading. Obviously fairy tales having the 'they lived happily ever after' and a tragedy ending with death but with meaning. 

     I am writing in generalizations, obviously every story is different but the main concept is the same. We don't want to read a story about Bob who eats oatmeal everyday and then dies. What did he learn? Where was his growth? What was the change? 

      And so life is like our stories. Or more like our stories are like life. We are always changing, growing, learning. At least we should be. If we stop, then our minds turn to mush and not even zombies want to eat them. (Just kidding, I'm sure zombies eat even mushy brains.) 

       I think people avoid change though because it's painful. It hurts. What change in your life ever happened without making your heart hurt, or your eyes threaten to ruin your makeup or (gasp) make you face yourself in the mirror. That one hurts. The old can you handle what you actually see in the mirror trick. Stories have used this technique to show their characters their flaws, their weaknesses, themselves. Painful process. 

      Charles Dickens' used ghosts to force change in his character. I think that technique might frighten a person into an early grave. (grin) 

      People like to wait until the New Year to start changing but it's just another excuse to put it off. I think if we really wanted to change shouldn't we do on the first day of spring, a time of renewal, growth, nice weather? Not start in the dead of winter when our own doom and gloomy winter blues make it hard to accomplish change? 

      Realizing change is going to happen to us even if we fight it should make us more inclined to control our own destinies, our own fates. At least to a certain degree, I couldn't control the dryer dying neither can I save my old Buddy dog from his own fate of dying from cancer. I rather have a dead dryer than watching my wonderful canine friend suffer but some change we can't control. 

      But some change can be controlled, or at least directed. I may never be a well known author but I won't even have a chance to reach that point until I make an effort to change and accomplish things that put me on that path. One day I might actually grow broccoli that doesn't go right from stalk to yellow flowers without producing florets but I won't know that if I stop trying. Someday I might finish learning a foreign language but short of being plucked from my home and dropped in a foreign country that's not going to happen unless I make an effort.

      So if you were a character in a story, what change might you see? What change would you direct in yourself, your neighborhood, your community, your country? Many good things in history did not happen until a person came along and wrestled change to the floor by the horns. Painful, sometimes gory, but much better than just watching from the sidelines. 
      And it certainty beats having mushy brains.