Navigating Change

My Son, Cole, is continuing to teach me through his learning to drive. Recently, I noticed how we change lanes differently. He, being the thoughtful careful one, slows down whenever he changes lanes. I, on the other hand, speed up when I change lanes. Now I suppose a good logical argument could be made for either approach, but the real lesson has more to do with life than driving.

 

I hope I am not simply attempting to defend my actions. My aim is to help all of you with whom my life is so beautifully connected to better understand how and why I behave the way I do. I speed up when I change. It doesn’t matter what change I am facing, when change is necessary I move faster. The increased momentum provides me greater balance. The reason for change, to me, comes from looking ahead and seeing the need or necessity to be in a different place. Looking ahead you can see what is and what isn’t there. The danger, the uncertainty, for me, of change is not in the future it is in the moment or even in breaking with the past. In other words, the risk comes from what is gaining on you from behind or what lays hidden beside you. So I speed up as I change to keep from hitting the hidden things around me. The rapid forward progress pushes me past the blind spots toward the open space out front.

 

For many people, perhaps most, the tension and uncertainty created by change makes slowing down the only logical option. To speed up seems reckless and dangerous.  So to those who for whatever reason have ended up riding through life with me, buckle up because I speed up when I change.

 

Do you speed up or slow down when you change lanes in life?

Future Priorities

(This post is really a comment to the on going dialog on www.davidherndon.wordpress.com check it out)

 
Sorry to wade into the stream of conversation so late, but I have been fighting the flood myself of late. This thought is admittedly only partially thought through, but let me float it past you anyway. (This paragraph was purely for Patrick’s enjoyment)
 
Couldn’t agree more with David’s observation about the need to coordinate lifestyle choices with changing values. As our stage in life changes so does what we value and thus so should the choices of how we invest our time. But if we have now passed through enough stages to observe that life changes, might we also be wise to consider that it will continue to change. Certainly that logic might lead one to invest even more heavily in the moment. Ie the kids will grow up so fast – therefore I MUST spend all the time with them that I possibly can.

 
It will likely be impossible for most of you to grasp this concept, but file it away and ponder it again in about a dozen years. Our kids are going to and should grow up and leave. They should have lives that are separate from us. Does making them the center of our universe prepare them appropriately to enter the world? Or following that logic, does investing all our time and attention within the walls of our home, prepare us to re-enter community when the kids are gone? To what degree should we invest in the future? It might not be our prime priority right now, but in the next stage of life it might? I see this most often in a mother whose whole world is the kids and as the kids grow up and move on the mothers struggle to let them go and have a hard time discovering who they are without the kids. They have failed to cultivate relationships they now need. They have neglected developing the interest that could now save them. They have no hobbies. They have not friends. They have no community.  

 
I would like to ponder this some more, but I can feel the tidal wave building and I don’t won’t to get caught in another flood, so I had best move on.