There is nothing so stable as change.
Bob Dylan said that. I remember once in my junior year of high school when my mom lost her job and I thought we might have to move again, I was talking to one of my teachers and he asked me if I ever felt as if a part of me was being left behind every time I moved. That didn’t really make sense to me then, and still doesn’t on many levels, but I guess I can see how he would have concocted such a notion. For me, change is just a fact of life. I moved around a lot as a kid and I never really expected to be anywhere for more than a couple years or so. It didn’t really bother me, I just saw it as the way things went. I get antsy staying in one place for too long. It’s the inner American in me, I guess. They say America invented the con man, in that manifest destiny kind of provided for it. Everyone is moving trying to conquer the span of an entire continent and so you get somewhere and no one knows who you are. There was no social security database, no satellite television broadcasting images of the King of England. You knew these people existed, but hell if you could recognize them on the street. So if you moved to an area and no one knew who you were, who were they to shoot down your claim that you were the heir to the throne of Brazilico. It didn’t even have to be a real place. You could be whoever you wanted (which brings about a whole separate discussion I will go into another time). It’s just like the Duke and the King in Huck Finn.
This does, however, present a problem. It allows far too easy an out in escaping your problems. Running away is never the answer, or at least that’s what we all grow up being told. Today it isn’t as easy to just leave and start over. It has become a small, small world in which we live and society has become more and more nosy, though in a less conspicuous manner. This calls for a more intuitive way of starting over. The majority of us do not have the resources of the Witness Relocation Program. We cannot just forge new identities on a whim. We have to be creative. To lie successfully, you have to make it believable. Take a general idea and add a lot of unverifiable detail. Pick a theme and go with it. Now that I know I am fostering your increasing impression that I am a pathological liar, let us return to the original topic.
I don’t know really why this quote struck me so. Perhaps just because I have never met anyone who agreed with me so totally on that front. Some people have a lot of trouble dealing with change, but I have always had trouble dealing with consistency. People tell me that they have hesitations about co-op because they don’t want to commit five years of their lives to education (versus four…), but for me a co-op would be ideal just because it means that there is change implemented every semester. The prospect of spending the next 5 1/2 years of my life in one place is more than daunting. It will take a substantial amount of summer planning on my part, but this isn’t about me. It’s about the fact that the only thing that seems to remain consistent throughout history is change.
Bob Dylan is also well-known for the line “The times, they are a-changing”. This also has always stood out to me because I, personally, would find it much more incredible if the times, for once, were not “a-changing”. And that isn’t just from personal experience, that’s the societal norm. They say history repeats itself, but in order to do so, the structure must first change. You cannot repeat a part of a cycle which is not complete. There is a notable assassination every twenty years or so in America. We cycle through each generation having its war. What is not considered in this is that for all the change, nothing is actually any different. Perhaps we have progressed in regard to the civil rights of African-Americans, and we certainly do not find slavery socially acceptable, yet there are more complex forms of segregation today that bring the attitudes of Americans to about the same point. It is true that there are no Japanese Internment Camps today, but how do you justify the circumstances under which people are being held at Guantanamo Bay? It is the same, yet different.
Change is, however, stable. It is predictable. But I ask you this: if change is so predictable, does it actually constitute change? Or would, then, a lack of change actually be the epitome of change? I will leave you to dwell on that for, oh, 24 hours or so.
