Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Change shmange

It's all very fine saying change is inevitable and all that. The truth of the matter is that most people, make that all people, hate and I mean really HATE change. But that doesn't mean they don't want change. Everyone wants the other person to change,the rest of the world to change perhaps!
It's like Calvin( Calvin and Hobbes) says-" I want everyone else to change for me."
Of course, that is a hyperactive six-year-old perspective...but it does say something of the truth doesn't it? Even the slightest change is a cause of great despair. It's all very nice to say 'signature style' and all that, but-For God sakes!!- even a wardrobe change makes most people uncomfortable!

I think my family is a living breathing example of people resisting change. It's always been 'the way' for my uncle to sit at the tail of the table. He likes it there( heh heh heh). So when a guest who didn't know of this took 'his' seat, he spent the entire meal twisting, turning, fidgeting....generally behaving like he was on pins and needles. Now whenever a new guest comes you find him running to claim the special position(heh heh heh). My 14 yr old brother is an equally good example of how unconsciously anti-change we are. He would not eat a sandwich because it had less peanut butter than he usually has! This example promptly does away with the ridiculous myth that only older people find change a 50 ft hurdle.

Aversion to change not only causes inconveniences to the dining table. On a larger scale, people just don't give attention to persons who the have already slotted as(read-have accepted as and refuse to change perspective) either dull, uncreative or even troublesome. That's what happened to Einstein. Thankfully he had one teacher who had the sense to do a paradigm shift. Then there are the social examples. Why do you think it takes so long for a tiny social reform to come through hmm?

Which only brings us to the central point- what makes us behave like stuck screws, refusing to some out until you are painfully wrenched to reality? Why do we persist in being so boxed? Is it because we are programmed for automatic denial? Or is it simply because we don't want to? Perhaps this reluctance to change is one of those 'human traits'-those flaws which are supposed to exist so that we remain human. Well, thats a reassuring possibility-that way we don't have to change being averse to change; right?

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