Change Doesn't Ask for My Permission

Coping With Things We Didn't Expect

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

One of the wisest sayings I’ve ever heard was said to me by elderly man with Alzheimer’s Disease. We used to read children’s stories together and I’d encourage him to act out the scenes. The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was a favorite of ours. Especially the - “Whose-Been-Sleeping-In-My-Bed?” part.

One day he told me, “What you can do, you can do. What you can’t, you can’t.”

I was stunned by the elegant wisdom of his words. And I wondered if they had been his own strategy for coping with the persistent downward changes he felt as his dementia progressed.

They Remind Me of the famous, “Serenity Prayer,” which asks for:

The Serenity to Accept the things we cannot change,

The Courage to Change the things we can, and

The Wisdom to Know the difference.

Change can be painful, especially if it catches us by surprise. Sudden changes sometimes make me angry, and I hate when that happens. But what I hate is not change itself, but changes that disrupt my plans, or expectations for my day, or my year, or my forever.

I hate the kinds of changes that do not ask my permission before coming into my life. The kinds that I cannot control. The changes that I cannot change, no matter how much courage I pray for. They are what they are, and they don’t care what I think about them.

My problem is not with change; it’s with control. I love to be in control of things, even if control is an illusion. I want a life that is well-ordered and reliable. Ambiguity makes me nervous, and I don’t trust mystery at all. I want to know what to expect, so I know who I’m supposed to be today.

Does any of that sound familiar?

My friend, Jeff says, “Expectations are premeditated resentments.” Ouch. That hurts a little, because I know it’s true. Yet, I don’t think he means that we should have no expectations. That doesn’t seem possible to me, or even desirable. What I think he means is that we need to be aware of our expectations and to enjoy them as long as they’re healthy. But to also hold them loosely, and not be overly attached to them. Expectations are a like a first draft that we know we’ll need to edit along the way.

Another elderly man told me, “The only thing that doesn’t change is change.” In other words, Change is to be expected, whether we like it or not.

Spiritual writer, James Finley tells a story about his well-known mentor, Thomas Merton. He says that when Merton asked him how things are going and he said, “Terrible.” Merton would say, “Don’t worry, things will get better.” And when he told Merton that things are “Great!” Merton said, “Don’t worry, they’ll get worse.” That’s just the way things go.

This seems universally true. Buddhists teach us about, “The Five Remembrances.” Five statements about the impermanence of things. About how – We are by nature those who grow old, those who get ill, and those who die. They acknowledge how change eventually leads to separation from all that we love or hold dear. And for better or worse, they teach us that the rewards or consequences of our actions are the ground we stand upon in changing times.

Thank God that we can act.

Thank God that we can still do what we can do, even if we can’t do what we used to.

Maybe today, we can still do what we can, to do something good for someone else.

Peace,

Joe