Change: Can You Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?

          As a Californian, I view change the same as being in one of our frequent earthquakes where the ground underneath me shifts unpredictably. I’ve never been a big fan of change. It used to irritate me that, just when things were exactly where I wanted them, bam! Everything would change!

When it comes hard and unexpectedly...

          I also resented change when it came so hard and unexpectedly in my senior years. I laughably thought after I retired, got my house just the way I wanted it, with the best friends around me that I had cultivated over the years plus my resources, financial, in particular, were lined up, it would all stay that way. Well, remember 2008? I was newly retired after working for 40 years. Millions of people, me included, could do little but try to keep our heads above water as we watched our savings dwindle, homes and jobs were lost along with a general reduction in the quality of our lives. I finally had to concede that change happens and that it’s going to happen for the rest of our lives.

          There is change that happens to us through no action on our part and there is change that we consciously choose. When I chose to move out from my spouse, I knew things would change, and I was willing to be open to that change because I wanted it to help strengthen my relationship with him, which it did. It’s the change I didn’t choose that, over time, caught me off guard and has been the most difficult to embrace.

I've learned to buckle up and meditate

          With a lot of reflection and work over the years, however, I’ve learned to accept change and see it more and more as an opportunity to learn and grow. I don’t love it, but at least I know that something good will generally accompany any discomfort that it entails. I’ve learned to buckle up and meditate my way to the next thing change brings forth.

          As the mature adult I've grown to be (don't laugh!), I now treat change like a boo boo, and you can too. Here’s my prescription for dealing with change:

          1)  Be shocked at the change, whatever it is.

New Year: Fresh Starts

          It’s not so much about making resolutions, resolutions which I’ve historically only been able to keep for about a week at the most. It’s not about sincere yet vaporous agreements with myself to eat better and exercise more. Okay, it used to be, but, now that I’m officially a senior citizen, I’ve cut way back on being naïve about such promises.

          It’s about new beginnings. Today is the first day of a new year and the first day of the rest of my life (gag). In spite of the saccharine nature of the latter part of that statement, I take a moment and wonder what the New Year will bring. During the last month, many of my friends have repeatedly said something like, “The new year has got be better. It can’t be any worse than this last one.” Doesn't it seem we’ve been saying that for several New Years?

         While that’s a fairly negative stance on 2012, the sentiment is borne out of many years of publicized and/or personally experienced economic turmoil, joblessness, foreclosures, rollercoaster gas prices and general uncertainty.

          And we have a new president. Not a new, new president, but a new term for President Obama. Hope springs eternal, in spite of the fiscal cliff fiasco! I promised myself, however, I’d never talk politics per se in this blog, so I divert away from any of that prickliness right now.

          January 1 is similar to the first day of spring:  it’s a fresh start. To me, having a fresh start, be it big or small, is always a good thing. It’s that moment when I take stock, about a single issue or about life in general. (If I had a dollar for every Monday morning fresh start I attempted!) In this way, fresh starts are a gift. They are always there giving us hope and not slapping us in the face if we’re not entirely successful in incorporating new and better things into our lives.

          New beginnings are age blind and economically resistant, and there are an unlimited number available to each and every one of us. What we do with them is our choice.