How To View Change as Gain, and Not Just Loss

Climate change is world change — and mind change

The world is changing. Getting warmer. Animals are migrating. Whole landscapes are also moving to what extent they can. Much is different, burned, or flooded. Humanity is also on the move, unrest and change are everywhere.

A great, mindful awakening, is also one of our tipping points.

Most of us do not see the world with which we grew up.

We should note change. We should even be very alarmed about some things. But we must also temper those feelings. It’s a very difficult dance. How to see what we need to see to boldly face truth and adapt different ways ourselves is a true challenge. How do we still appreciate, and wonder at the natural world so our ability to be grateful, inspired, and even functional, is intact?

Note that change is the way of existence

Change also reminds us that just as the wise, old adage says, “This too, shall pass.”

If it’s horrible, it will pass. If it’s beautiful, it will pass. If it is sorrow, it will pass. If it is celebration, it will pass.

Your life: it will pass.

Change is a process you can learn to appreciate in and of itself

The Bhagavad Gita advises:

“Set thy heart upon they work, but never on its reward.” This advice can help us remind ourselves that there is real reward in living in the moment, not just the outcome.

Change can help you grow

There is a reason why the text of sacred books that note “To everything there is a season…” are so universal, popular, and intuitively understood. We need to mark change with our best human attributes, tolerance, acceptance, growth, and compassion.

Change is both loss and gain

The reality is that we can, and do affect, the world around us, within limits. This is both humbling and empowering. As an example, from my personal life growing up, when your own area ceases to have ponds to skate upon in the winter, it can be distressing. It can also be a time to see the green, and note the power of that habitat to adapt.

Change is instructive, because nature is instructive, and wise

Take for example the reality that we thought it was a good idea to use toxins, fossil fuels, coal, and so on, as fuel. Nature, or reality therapy, if you prefer, showed us this was a mistake. When we ignore the wisdom of nature’s instruction, we suffer. When we listen, such as limiting toxins, as in the pesticide DDT, we can see a “Silent Spring” rebloom into one of recovering birdsong. When we attend to the ozone layer, by regulating CFCs, we stop hurting ourselves, and help nature in ways that attend to helping.

Change is inevitable, but also influenced

Political change most often comes from a groundswell of joined voices.

When we put all of these things together, we note that change is deeper and more mysterious than it seems. That is because change is both internal, external, and eternal. When we create innovate and cooperate, we drive change. It’s time to innovate our technology, but also our psychology. Octavia Butler wrote a series of science fiction books that held “God is change.” And, also that, “All that you change, changes you.” These ideas are well worth exploring.

Change rebirths the world, again and again

In the spring, hearing the first robins bob about and sing while new buds open is life -affirming. But it is even more than that.

It restores the spirit, mind, and body. Of the whole WORLD. We can realize that our very cells regenerate, and our ideas and views do not have to remain stagnant. We can realize the tremendous abundance we can fill ourselves with, give one another, and be revitalized that our planet gives life to us.

We must cherish it, and thus, change. the world

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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