I don’t like lumpy custard. Ice blocks should be frozen, soup should be hot and red and pink should never be worn together. There are definitely some things in this world that should comply with tradition. But with those timeless classics comes a teacher that no one really gets along with. This teacher’s name is Change, and she is unstoppable.
Change comes in many forms. She comes in the passing of time, in seasons that shake leaves off trees, in years that cause unforgiving wrinkles. She comes in the appearance of new ideas, of the invention of the wheel, the aeroplane, the nuclear weapon. She comes in minds and hearts and feelings, in sounds and sights and experiences, and she comes when we least expect. Change will never fail to surprise. Economists can predict that a dollar will drop, people can expect the world to end in 2012, but still we can be caught unawares by major happenings like natural disasters and terminal diseases. We can’t predict these things, and we can’t often prepare for them either. No one can be ready for someone close to them to die. No one knows which moment will be their last, and no one can perfectly predict the weather. Take Japan: nobody who lived there could have known that their houses would be washed away, and they would lose their most precious belongings. But when they did, they picked themselves back up and accepted that everything had changed. Life is Change’s playground and the only thing to do is agree with her.
We don’t like to think of Change as being very nice, but we never think about how much we rely on Change for our world to go on. Without Change we would be eating leaves for every meal, excepting the occasional mammoth. According to a lot of people’s beliefs, without Change, we wouldn’t exist. So she’s not all earthquakes and cold winters. “He who rejects change is the architect of decay”, said Harold Wilson, once Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This is true, literally and metaphorically. If your house is growing mould, and you don’t want to take out the Spray and Walk Away, decay is on your doorstep. But I think the main idea of this quote is saying that if you’re not going to change anything, it will change itself, and not the way you want it to. Everything that anyone does, sparks change. Some of these changes are affecting you today, so there’s no point in whining about it. Because our teacher, Change, is not all that bad. Think of the designer shoes you wear. Those didn’t spring into being by themselves. And what about all of the good books in this world. Their authors didn’t just come up with a few descriptive sentences and stop, because anything they changed would ruin it- that would not make a very exciting book. So stop dreading every day and start dreaming, because Change can give you nice surprises once in a while.
Change is one of the best teachers around. She’s not employed by any school, but you can’t miss her. Most of the things you really value knowing are things that Change has taught you. You will not always remember the different types of rocks, or the name of every famous Greek philosopher, but these gems of knowledge you have from Change will stay with you forever. Nobody can teach you how to stay afloat in this world better. So bite the cold hard bullet of reality and ride the wave of Change. You owe her.
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