Sudden Change (continued)

Remind yourself to be present, to live simply, to keep centered and at peace as change swirls around.

I have been thinking a lot about my grandson-- and what would be the most important thing I could convey to him. It seems very likely that the world in which he will be an adult in will be radically different from the one we now share. What training could he get to help him cope with knowing the unknowable? Training and Learning to be flexible with his approach to life and to have a flexible mind will help him.

Accepting change, allows one to stay in balance and be in much better able to attend to any situation. A mind that is able to flex from one view to a new view is a mind that can meet any situation with compassionate and creative responses.


Flexibility of mind can be strengthened through sitting still. We need to resist the urge to jump up and do something about our thoughts and feelings. We need to have time to explore other options rather than the first automatic response, the habitual thoughts, and stories about a situation that we normally fall into. We have to learn to become pliable.

To help here are some more ideas on how to be pliable and go with the flow:

Baby steps. Take things in small steps. Try to bite off huge chunk, just bite off something small at first. So make your first attempts to go with the flow small ones try to focus on your breathing. Then try to get perspective after you breathe. Try the easier situations first

Laugh. It may help you to see things as funny, rather than frustrating. Car broke down in the middle of traffic and I have no cell phone or spare tire? I could be angry and upset, but if I think about it as a story to tell, the situation has humour, I can tell the story and laugh at my own incompetence and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. This however, requires a certain amount of detachment; you can laugh at the situation if you are above it, but not within it. Detachment is a good thing. If you can learn to laugh at things, you have come a long way. At first you may have to try laughing even if you do not think the situation is funny I try to create a story around the situation that will allow me to laugh and then the story will most likely become funny.

Keep a journal. This is one of the best uses of a journal I have been told. Once a day, try to recall what situations or changes happened to you and then write about those situations. Why did you get upset? Why did you laugh? What did you try to do? Did it work, and if not, why not? What can you do next time? This kind of recollection and examination, after the fact, will help you learn from the process.

Meditate. I am not good at keeping a journal, but I at least I do a daily review in my head. Do some meditation, or drink a cup of tea, or walk as a way of de-stressing. As you do this go over the day and examine it. I do some deep breathing, and then go over each situation, trying to see it as a detached observer.

Realize that you cannot control others. I sometimes get frustrated with other people; because they do not act the way I want them to act. It took me a great many years to realize that they are acting according to their personality, according to what they feel is right, and they are not going to do what I want all of the time. Once I learned to accept that I could not control them, and that I had to accept them for who they are, accept the things they do it helped I was less frustrated.

Accept change and imperfection. When I get things the way I like them, I usually do not want them to change. However, they will change this is a fact. I cannot keep things the way I  want them to be … instead, is it not  better to learn to accept things as they are. Accepting that the world is changing, and we are a part of that change helps keep me in balance.

Enjoy life as a flow of change, chaos, and beauty. Do you have an ideal that you try to make the world conform to? Guess what; that will likely never happen. Instead, try seeing the world as it is, messy, chaotic, painful, sad, dirty, beautiful happy and completely perfect. The world is beautiful, just as it is. Life is not something static, but a flow of change, never staying the same, always getting messier and more chaotic, always beautiful. There is beauty in everything around us, if we look at it as perfect. And as my friends say life is better than the alternative

Insight into change teaches us to embrace our experiences without clinging to them; to get the most out of them in the present moment by fully appreciating their intensity, in full knowledge that soon we have to have to let them go to embrace whatever comes next. Insight into change teaches us hope. Because change is built into the nature of things, nothing is inherently fixed, not even our own identity

Therefore, for my grandson, whose tools for meeting the future may be obsolete the day after they are invented, I encourage him to sit down and sit still while the winds of change blow over, under, around and through him remain flexible and enjoy whatever life changes bring.