Day: December 8, 2012

For Red, being henpecked is a literal, not  metaphorical experience.

(This is an Iphone5 photo).

Any shrink or spiritual counselor or healer can testify that many people want to change, but few people do change. I think this is so, this is my experience. Change is an integral part of life, but few people actually do change, and I understand why this is so. Change is painful, painstaking, frightening. I remember a diabetes doctor telling me that in 30 years of practice only two patients had elected to change their lifestyle and diet rather than go on medication. They didn’t want to change.

It is also an axiom in the divorce world that in most unhappy marriages one person wants to change, the other doesn’t. A spiritual counselor told me the most frustrating part of her work was that so many people contacted her seeking help in changing, but it was the rare client who really wanted to change or did. I believe I really wanted to change, and I find that I have to work at it just about every day of my life. Change involves understanding the way one things, fighting years, even a lifetime of habits and reflexes and environmental shaping. The mind resists change – so does the body, often, sometimes fights back powerfully to keep it from happening.

The world resists change too. People who change are widely seen as unstable, even threatening. They are having crises, mid-life or other. It is almost always easier not to change than to change. The major institutions of life – medicine, law, media, politics, portray change as terrifying, dangerous, foolish, even treasonous.

There is a point in people’s lives where they feel – or are made to feel – that they are too settled, it is too late. There are mortgages to think of, retirement, kid’s college tuition, health insurance, IRA’s, Mom and Dad, friends and family. They bow to the system. Life seems to throw one obstacle after another in front of change, and the mind – some call it the ego – screams out in fear and anger that we dare not change, we can’t afford it, it is too dangerous, too uncertain, too expensive, too frightening.

Change is, I think, the beginning of awakening. I understand there is no path to a meaningful life that is easy, free of pain or fear, or lucky. There is nothing lucky about change, there is nothing lucky about a meaningful life. The wisest and most learned and grounded people will crash and burn sometimes, because life happens, and has little regard for our intentions and rationales.

I admire agents of change, people who change. To me they are heroic. They have confronted life and the shrouds of fear and confusion – I call them the smoke bombs of life  – that stymie and confuse us. People who change are touched by angels, a special tribe. They will know great joy and meaning, and they will know the crown of thorns that come along.

Good day, long day at the art show. Lots of people, happy to find some local things to buy for Christmas. Red greeted everyone and then lay down and went to sleep right in the middle of the pay line, which Maria was manning. That boy can go anywhere. Details on Maria’s website. Lots of people showed up to see the half dozen artists showing their work. Lots of stuff sold.

We went to dinner at Momma’s Restaurant in Jackson, and I couldn’t resist taking a photograph of Louise Fairbanks – “Momma.” She is a strong woman and when she is holding court behind the bar, she seems to me like a pilot at the helm, a rider on a horse, she is a strong woman in charge. She is almost always behind the bar, Momma’s nerve center.

Everywhere I go, I am hearing about the “Fiscal Cliff.” When I turn on the radio, in urgent e-mail messages, from worried friends. I had lunch the other day with a friend who has been following the Fiscal Cliff story very closely. He is a good and conscientious citizen and he has always thought me a bit odd for not paying more attention to the news from Washington.   He spends hours poring through online blogs, newssites, and at night, he scans the cable news channels looking for meaning and understanding. He is not doing well on that front, he seemed drawn, pre-occupied, pald and fidgety. He was mumbling incoherently about deductions, rates, entitlements, payouts and block grants. I was worried about him. He tried and explain the Fiscal Cliff to me. A left right thing, he said. Divisiveness. Rigidity. If it isn’t resolved by January 1, horrible things will happen. Recession. Layoffs, unhappiness on Wall Street, lowered credit ratings. I got drowsy. But a bell went off.

Oh, I said, I get that, I know about the Fiscal Cliff. We have a Fiscal Cliff right here at the farm, we have been living it. This shocked him. You have? He seemed to focus, to listen. Sure, I said, I just moved to a new home, fixed it up. The first one has been on the market for a year. Revenues are declining, deficits are growing, costs are rising,  savings have been drained, the future is uncertain.

His eyes widened. Boy, he says, that sure sounds like a Fiscal Cliff thing. How did you get into that?, he asked.

Oh you know, he said. Meaningful life. Love, that sort of stuff. He frowned. He didn’t seem to be following me. I urged him to start his own blog. Put up his own ideas. He could find lots of people to talk about the Fiscal Cliff. In the meantime, I said, I needed to re-think my relationship with politics, which I have felt almost completely alienated from.

My Fiscal Cliff is approaching, also. If I slide over it, Wall Street will be  unhappy. Credit ratings will fall, bank accounts will be empty, donkeys will be looking for hay. Sheep will not have grain on frosty mornings.  The dogs will not get rawhide chews every night. And forget that new camera I am drooling for.  I used to feel very disconnected from Washington, from Congress. Now I feel like a patriot, in sync with the world at last. I  might start following cable news again.