Keep the Change
When I was growing up I never really knew of things changing in me or around me that would let me have some sort of guide for what was a good change or bad changes. I just survived in a world that seemed already set up to be just what I was to expect my life to be. We as children never really understand how our world is determined by how our parents lived through their world as children.
I look at things so differently now that my life seems a dream or a movie of someone else’s life. We do make changes in our growth into an age of expected adult hood that are not always good changes or should I say the correct change needed? Some changes are forced upon us physically and emotionally, and then other changes just seem to come naturally. I could not really tell you what these changes are in you, but what they were for me.
I guess as I was surviving in my world somehow I knew that I could not stop physical growth and this I had accepted as part of what I could not change. Then there were all of the emotional changes which caused those times when I wanted desperately to be someone else. This was a time when we will force changes so obvious the word phony was the only word that fit.
When I tried to act sophisticated by smoking cigarettes like the glamorous movie stars that I could never really hope to become this change only brought me more suffering and ridicule.
We all pick things that we do not like about ourselves and fantasize how things would be better if only we could change this or that about ourselves. Our changes are only good or bad if they are really seen as improving our lives at the time. Very little changes were made by me that would ever constitute a good change. I learned by conditioning as well and this in itself will cause problems to us.
Your environment does effect and affect how you grow and what changes will occur to you during your childhood. The conditioning factor is somehow harder to overcome. It seems that these conditions go deep into the core of our existence to the point of not knowing all of them without a lot of self examination and then it takes some of us almost a lifetime to get over them. I believe that God intervenes on our behalf and shakes some of these conditionings loose and will raise them to the surface for discovery.
How do we know what changes to keep? How would we really know what good or bad changes are? It took a lot of life for me to understand what good really was. I always determined good by how I felt. This is a false measurement. Example; if you are denied candy because you are diabetic, you would consider anything that let you eat candy as a good thing, or change even though this could cause you harm. Feelings are never really a good way to determine good changes as a rule.
I know that sounds confusing, but we all need to be seeing that our changes for the better determine a change that improves our lives, enriches it and allows a new growth and control over bad habits and conditioning. Example; any change that allows us to change our eating habits and conditioning to give new control would be a betterment to our lives.
Now I am about to really confuse you. Some bad changes can be turned into good ones later in our lives. What do I mean? Well we need to live one way in order to appreciate another way to live. Yes, I am saying that not all good changes are brought about by some outer force or just living a certain amount of time. Bad conditionings and habits usually will eventually play a role in our want of change.
It is the heavy weight of our sins, or conditionings in life that cause problems for us. It is the reason we look for something to fix them. Not really knowing what changes or how to cause them to happen for the betterment of our lives, we all are looking for something that will make our lives better. I say keep the change in your life until you find a way to identify them as bad or good ones.
This will lead us to a desire to improve more. Yes, some of us need bad conditioning to spur us on to continue our seeking changes, and then the good changes we make do the same thing. They make us want more changes that give us more control over our future lives. I cannot tell you all of the changes made in my life as I grew from childhood to adulthood, but I can tell of the ones that made me a different and happy as to want more of them.
My major changes were in my veiled vision of who I was and had become to those around me. I was brutal and unforgiving and totally justified in this conditioned thinking. My third daughter developed Leukemia and almost died as a result of my rage and blindness to what I really had evolved into. (Read in heroes a collection of Angels) This was the beginning of major life altering changes.
All of the small changes helped get me to big changes, and it was the bad changes in me as well as the good changes that brought me to where my life could be drastically altered. This is why I say Keep the Change! You never know what small changes good or bad will lead to your really big change in the future. There are many articles on this website that will show of changes made in my life that helped me get to the ones that really counted. I hope you will take some time to explore them.
Barbara L. Gonzalez ponderland@gmail.com
Tears of pride stung my eyes as I watched my teenage son and daughter walk up our driveway. They were both laughing and teasing each other. My son held a little hatchet in his hand that he had borrowed from his uncle. They both had socks on their hands to keep them warm. They were off to the woods to find the family Christmas tree. I had sadly told them that Christmas looked pretty bleak as another divorce was pending, and being a college student, our money was very limited. There was no money for a Christmas tree and not much for presents either. My kids assured me not to worry and that they would find a tree in the woods.
Do you remember Maha Monther? Six years ago, we stood together at the office of the National Phone Company in Sana’s, Yemen. I was waiting to send a fax to the US and I was impatiently (and loudly) complaining about the long line of people. You wanted to know how long I had been waiting. I told you about ten minutes. Calmly you said, “My sister and I have been waiting for five hours to call our family in Iraq. Sometimes the phones at home work and other times they do not. If they don’t, we have to start all over again in the back of the line. Or, the phone company closes, and we have to come back the next day. ” I got embarrassed and tongue tied. After a considerable wait, the phone company closed. Neither one of us was able to get in touch with our families. We now had a common enemy, a phone company outside of our own country. This sealed our friendship.
I remember how much you disliked wearing the required black clothes in public. “We hate this life here. In Iraq, we were students. We had books to read. Theaters to go to. Movies to watch. We could go out at night, meet friends. Here, in Yemen, we have nothing! As women we can’t go anywhere. We are only allowed to go to work if we cover ourselves in these ugly black bed sheets, and after work we have to go home and stay there.” You used to laugh at my note taking during our conversations. Sometimes you would be embarrassed about having said this or that and you would say, “Oh No! You didn’t write this down, did you?” Dear Maha, you will be happy to know that I no longer have the notebook. Right now I’m so mad at myself for having read “Conquering the Paper Pile-up” and “Feng Shue.” The first one was to teach me to clean up my act. The latter, how to harmonize my external and internal environment. So far, it has created nothing but confusion and the loss of my notes about our precious conversations.
But there’s always the memory, I learned enough from you about Iraq to know for the first time what a marvelous history Iraq has and to discover “with-it” modern” Islamic people. I was surprised what a BIG difference between Muslims in Egypt, Yemen, Iran, and those in Iraq. Wow, and all for the good in my opinion. You told me that you loved your President, I never did understand. I didn’t want to question you about it, I thought it would hurt your feelings. I also remember you telling me that you were in exile not because you feared your President, but because your family thought the Gulf War was not the end of it and that it would be safer for you outside of Iraq. How did your family know?
It’s that time of year again when we start to plan for Christmas. The weather has begun to get chilly, and we can see our breath in the air when we speak. We start wearing our heavy winter coats, hats, gloves, and furry boots. All of the shops are advertising sales to beckon us into their midst to buy their wares. There’s excitement in the air, especially with the young people. There are parades, tree lighting, and singing carols. It’s hard not to get excited and involved. Our children’s awe and wonder rubs off and we can’t help remember how it felt as a child at Christmas ourselves.
At this time last year I was eagerly awaiting my SAT scores so that I could begin my journey toward ‘Life-After-High-School.’ My horrible habit of procrastination is what led me to be somewhat anxious while I waited due to the fact that I couldn’t retake them if I got a bad score—it was just too late in the game for that. Being a first generation college student meant that I also was the first to discover and to try to hop through precarious and devilishly placed hoops that make up our higher education system. Sometimes I hopped unsuccessfully, landing in a puddle of murky water not entirely clear on how to get back in the game. Fortunately, however, I’m surrounded by wonderful friends—some with experience and others with just an uncanny knowledge—and with their help I survived the race to the front steps of Southern Oregon University and now, here I am, fully enjoying this road to the rest of my life.