As Barack Obama’s inauguration nears, there’s a groundswell of excitement sweeping the country. It’s on the news; in the papers. “Change is coming to America!” The nation’s first African-American (or multi-racial, if you prefer) President. A new era. A new day.
It’s an interesting counter-point to the past few months of worry about changes we’re far less happy about (see: economy). But what does that mean? To conclude only that there are some changes we like, and others we don’t, would be a vast oversimplification of a very complex and nuanced dance.
In many ways, humans struggle with change—regardless of whether we’re coping with external changes in the world or attempting personal changes in our habits, fitness, or lives. And yet … we don’t always fear or resist change. We sometimes hope for it. Crave it. Work for it. Which means, at the very least, that our views about change are not simple, or easily reduced to a convenient sound-bite. It also means that change itself comes in many variations, forms, and guises.
The celebration and emotion surrounding this particular, landmark inauguration clearly reflect the relief and joy of people who worked very hard, for a very, very long time, to effect change for the better. Change we work for, at great effort and sometimes great risk, causes as much rejoicing, when it finally occurs, as finding water in the desert after days of exhausting search. (At least, for those who’ve worked for it. One person’s joyful change can sometimes be another person’s worst nightmare.)
I think there’s also a difference in how we feel about change we work for, versus change that hits us out of left field, or change that feels out of our control. Or change that we perceive will enhance our lives, versus change we fear may work to our detriment. Even if, in the end, the changes we fear turn out to be good, or the changes we welcome turn out to have some unexpected challenges or downsides associated with them. Ask anyone who’s ever gotten married—especially a second marriage, with children involved—and my guess is that most of them would concur on this point.
Like I said … the subject of change, and our attitudes toward it, is a vast and tangled forest that would take years to understand completely, or even see clearly—if it could be done at all.
But looking at the faces of the thousands of people today-especially older people—with tears running down their cheeks; parents holding their children up to watch Obama’s train passing, saying “Remember this!” in fierce tones … is still a powerful reminder about how important the possibility of change is. We may have a complicated relationship with change and uncertainty. But if nothing were ever uncertain, nothing could ever change for the better.
The excitement and emotion on all those joyful, tearful faces reminds me of a line from the book Wind, Sand and Stars, by French author Antoine de St. Exupery (who also wrote The Little Prince): “They are like the prisoner set free, who marvels at the immensity of the sea.” A new law has not been passed; new rights have not been granted. What’s changed-what’s caused so many people to shed tears at the marvel of a horizon suddenly so much broader than they once dared to imagine—is simply people’s view of what’s possible. Starting, I might add, with the miraculous and fundamental possibility of change, itself.
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Even though nearly everybody wishes for SOME kind of change in govenment,, customs, education, social institutions, etc., nearly every change that happens — or is even proposed — is controversial. That is one reason why politics is such a perpetual squabble..
In former eras, it would seem, big sweeping changes rarely happened and were not often wanted by much of anyone. Now we have come a long way toward the opposite pole, where it is taken for granted that nothing is really fixed and everything will change a lot within our own lifetimes The idea of change has become part of our culture, and so has the idea of progress. And we often tend to assume that almost any change is progress.
Sometimes we are wrong about that, and we have to back up, which is hard. Look at the mess American public education made of people’s ability to read when the schools stopped teaching phonics, or the sound of the letters. Around 1980 I knew a grown man of about 25 who was not stupid, but he didn’t even have the concept that each letter had a sound to it. Needless, to say, he could hardly read. A good-hearted neighbor woman took the time and trouble to walk him through it from first grade level all over again, and at last he understood. But why did our educrats get us into such a mess at all? Too much enthusiasm for something new, and reckless implementation of it nationwide without any real testing of what it would lead to.
Well, at my age I am no doubt more suspicious of change for its own sake than a younger person would be. That is human nature, and hardly any of us afe excmpt from its dictates. In science, which is my background, I tend to be skeptical of new theories until I see good evidence for them. In some cases, where the evidednce looked strong, I have accepted new scientific ideas almost overnight
But in other cases I tend to hold out until the good evidence appears. For example, I am somewhat of a skeptic on the subject of global warming. Not that I doubt it is bound to happen if we keep putting carbon dioxide into the air. I was pointing out that danger way back in the 1970s in teaching astronomy, and pointing to Venus as a good example of a planet that was ruined by too much CO2. But I am not convinced it is happening on a significant scale right now because I have not seen any evidence of a rise in sea level. When the polar ice melts, the oceans have to rise, and by a lot. Weather is tricky to interpret because of all its ups and downs, but the ocean is a great worldwide sink that averages it all out. It is sure to tell us when melting exceeds freezing on a worldwide scale. That is how I look at it.