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Thoughts for the New Year (Part 2: Nature's Most Relentless Force)

There is a demographic in our world comprised of people to whom resistance and opposition come naturally: the "rebounders." Your typical rebounder is characterized by a haughty attitude, is quick to anger or dispute, and won't take "no" for an answer. They fight anything that comes their way with whatever they may have at their disposal until they fall to their knees in exhaustion. Why do they do this? Because these people have a complex about being acted on by any force that may change them, no matter how inconsequential or harmless that force may really be. And, united in large enough numbers, this demographic can ebb away just about any tide of change rolling their way. Any tide, that is, but time.

In a country where pretty much everything you can think of falls under the order of checks and balances, time is an agency that goes about its business completely undisturbed. Time doesn't stop working for Martin Luther King Day, Good Friday, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, or even Christmas, if you can believe that (hell, not even Walmart is open Christmas, and Walmart is open all the time.). Unlike many of our earthly programs and endeavors, time never retrogrades. Unlike even the most disciplined soldier, time never gets off-step. Time presses onward and takes anything and everything with it, regardless of whether they're trying to put up a fight or not.

The aforementioned rebounders who fight any force that come their way try and fight time just like any other enemy. While time destroys the collagen fibers in the face of a supermodel past her prime, she gets botox injections, only for time to get to work destroying those too. As time slowly brittles the bones and atrophies the muscles of an aging star athlete, this rebounder empties his savings account with mass purchases of gym memberships, bull shark testosterone, and all that other stuff that makes a vitamin store smell so weird--all while time dutifully keeps chipping away at the athlete's insides. And even while time causes two people, who, at the beginning of the year were happy as they could be, to become alienated from each other, the hopeless romantic wades against the stream, fumbling all the while in feeble hopes of just somehow winning back the other's heart. For the people who will not ever admit defeat, time will ultimately have the final say.

Although I'm no supermodel or star athlete, I've been a witness to some of time's more brutal work just this year. I think of myself and my circumstances just a year ago and I realize just how much time has taken with it before my very eyes. I imagine standing on a riverbed and watching as the things I held dear--loved ones, possessions, ideas I clung to--slowly, yet constantly and without any sign of stopping, float down the river before me, and I find my feet rooted to the ground, helpless to resist. One of the most sinister things about our mutual acquaintance time is how it operates so slowly and in a realm where we can't notice its changes until we finally blink and re-envision the world in which we've been living. It's like the old adage goes: "You never really know what you had until it's gone."

I would like to close this second part of my series on a much more positive note that'll make time look less like an enemy and hopefully more like a neutral and natural force. While it is true that time takes with it many things that we hold dear, it is absolutely crucial that we realize that time also leaves new things where the old have been taken away. Like any scientific process of which equilibrium is a key concept to its explanation, time will replace what it has taken in some way or another. Time may not rekindle a beloved romance, restore an afflicted body, or bring back our loved ones from the dead, but what it always leaves us is more of itself. And with that precious extra time, we can find a companion, be it physical, mental, or spiritual, to ride time's ever-flowing tide with. When the effects of time have got you down, realize that there's more of it ahead.

Thoughts for the New Year (Part 1: Adapting to Adapting to Change)

Change.

It's a scary word for many people. Change keeps companies on their toes, and sometimes sweeps them off their feet if it's dramatic enough. Change forces the media to stay ahead of the game before they're labeled "old-fashioned" or "lame." Even worse, change means that life cannot simply go on normally forever. Change is a constant force that, if it does not move a person, will certainly leave its marks on them.

But does change have to be a bad word? There's no denying that change is inconvenient to at least some small degree for any person living a routine life, which would be everybody in this world. Everything that happens in this world affects everyone in it in some way. Were we able to have our way, most of us would probably choose how we wanted life to be and never ask to change it, and especially not have someone else change it for us. On the other hand, however, who's to say any one person knows what's right for society as a whole? Regardless of how you feel politically (I'm still not even sure how I feel, so I can hardly be swaying you in that sense), collaborating with several others from different backgrounds is crucial to getting all the background we can get to determine what really is best for the average individual on this earth.

All my life, I've grown up with blinders on, not wanting to really consider anything outside of what I've had placed in front of me as I walk straight through life. It wasn't until the end of this year that I really learned what good change can do for a person or even an entire people. There's much to be said about time-honored traditions, customs, and laws because many of the ones instituted have stood the test of time as being relevant even today. But there too are some statutes, thoughts, and behaviors that match an older society and one that shouldn't reflect on us as a progressive world in every other realm. It's been a process, but my own natural social life has turned into a field study where I've startlingly found a remarkable number of people not screwed over by change, but rather blessed by it. For some of these people, change gripped their lives in very personal ways that they couldn't help, but instead of trying to fight what was just natural, they went with this change, curious to see where the tide may take them and sick and tired of fighting the change within them for the applause of others.

There are always two sides to every war, but we can't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Some people are born in circumstances where they are generally privileged socially in just about every way you could think of. For these people, change is not seen as necessary or even favorable. For the various people who are born under different circumstances, the war is about embracing the lot they've been dealt in life and fighting for change to ensure the security of that lot once they've really embraced it. If you're one of the former and don't think change is important, consider something you hold very dear in your own life taken away from you--something so dear to you that if you were to lose it, it would irreversibly cost you your reputation. If you could never get that one thing back, whatever it was, wouldn't you want absolution from the law from being trodden on even more? Consider those who have been dealt a different hand in life: that's how you win the game.