by Christyl Rivers

Created on: December 01, 2010   Last Updated: June 29, 2011

Life is ever-changing.  Change is the only permanent thing we know.  If you seek stability, security, and permanence, you are in line at the wrong universe.  In this universe, change is what drives the cycles of your life from the day you are conceived, to the day you become dust once more.  Yet, there are great tools to cope with change,  as we shall outline here.

The hardest kind of changes are death, job loss,  divorce, extreme illness, or any thing that rocks our world out of kilter.  At first we deny change, then we resist it.  In time, with insight of knowing change is inevitable, we begin to explore ways to allow change to actually be our ally. Finally, we find acceptance with the change.

To reduce anguish, realize denial and resistance are painful, and can seriously debilitate your life.  If at the first blow of a disaster you readily accept change, if you know it will happen, you can find some degree of stability more easily.  You will develop the stability to align yourself with nature’s laws. Stars are born and die, planets are born and die. You, and everyone you ever met, is born and will die. Accepting it is a huge challenge, but entirely worth it because you let go of a struggle for impossible security.

Nature’s laws, or God’s laws, if you prefer, tend toward birth, entropy, and re-birth. What else could one do with eternity?  Death seems cruel, but could you live without killing plants that feed you, animals that nourish you, forests that house you, or anything, virtually anything, you can think of in your constantly changing mind?

How do some people sail through their troubles and others wallow in misery and despair?

When there is trouble, unemployment, divorce, a death, or something on a smaller scale, say your wallet is stolen, what can you control about that situation?

You can control only your reaction.  You can perfect only your acceptance. You can rise to work through all obstacles head on, or you can hide away for awhile until you realize there is no escape from life and from change.

In a larger sense, humanity, once we get past this nasty part about destroying the planet we live on, has and can, improve relationships with other living things. We have almost stopped slavery; we know war is not always so great, we finally see we like clean air, water and soil, and even the general shape of mountains and trees. We are learning to learn.

In the Sound of Music some

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