Change is natural, and if you think about it, inevitable. One on-line dictionary defines life as: “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.” Yet a vast number of human beings are uncomfortable with change. However, researchers tell us that discomfort, even pain are characteristic of change. “We all experience problems in many areas of our lives but don’t always realise that our minds and bodies respond to how we rate them. Evaluating a difficulty as unbearable is not only flawed but it also triggers images and feeling that fight against goal achievement (Avy Joseph, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, p31)” A rare person might enjoy discomfort and pain, most of us avoid them. This is not surprising. Discomfort and pain don’t feel good.

However, having established that change (and therefore discomfort if not pain) is inevitable, one question remains. How do we get through a change in our lives or circumstances without self-destructing. The image of a tree in the wind is useful here. Change is often described as a great wind scattering all before it. You know the drill. The tree that stands straight and refuses to bend before the wind of change often breaks. The tree that bends and flexes with the wind more often survives. The analogy is limited because much more is needed to survive change than flexibility. Yet being flexible is a place to start.

The other useful part of the ‘winds of change’ analogy is patience. Flex, or bend, with the change and it will soon be over. We must be patient with ourselves and our reactions (remember the discomfort and pain part of change). Surviving change means having the patience to experience the pain and discomfort, so we can emerge stronger, wiser, and more flexible when the turbulence of change ceases. Examine that previous sentence carefully. Note that when we have experienced change we are afterward not the same as before the events of change occured. Are the results of change always for the better? We like to hope so, even if improvement is not always the case.

Follow the events in treatment of a disease such as pneumonia or cancer. The disease itself initiates change. Treatment initiates even more change, often much physical pain and discomfort is experienced while all of this is going on. If the body survives the onslaught of disease and treatment, it is never the same as before. The body may be weaker or stronger, need more of something and less of something else that it once used for survival. The significant point is that after change a living body is not the same as before the change. What if the body does not survive the change. We call this death. Those things which once lived but no longer change are dead. This is true of life, language, politics, religion and millions of other categories we could name. About the only things I know of that cannot die are personal beliefs (God, goodness, badness and other intangibles) and ideas. Yet even those change, indeed are ever-changing.

Why do I personally bother with this discussion of change. I’m an author and stories are made up of the events and emotions that describe change in one or more characters. For me, and my readers, change and all that goes with it, is essential. I maintain that stories are one way in which we cope with change. Not because they help us feel better about change in our own lives, althought that might happen. Stories are an exceedingly useful tool for learning to cope with change by reading about the experiences of someone else–fictional or not–who managed to survive and even thrive as the result of the discomfort and pain change wroght in his or her life.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Is change inevitable? How has change impacted your life? Do you have other thoughts on the topic? Perhaps you’re a part of the RAVON Community and need to leave a response for our ‘Find the Keyword’ game.