Change

When did it happen?  I have embraced the concept that nothing is permanent but when does the change happen.  There feels like there must be a subtle psyche war with unconscious karmic conditioning  clinging  to behavior patterns while doing a life walk on the slippery slide of ever present cosmic change.  Over time, you develop patterns of behavior often just based upon, this is the way you always do it and you continue to just do it. Sometimes you even cling to painful thought patterns given to you by a parent that you don’t want to carry, but you do.  As your thoughts start to say walk left and your continued actions pattern take you right, you have conflict.  It is sometimes painful to give up what is comfortable and familiar even it is a tack in your shoe.   

My mother was a Catholic, my father was just a good man who according to Sister Mary Theophane, my second grade teacher, was going to hell because he was not Catholic. I went to Catholic schools, from first through college and often daily Mass when I was younger.   Some place along the line I started reading Thomas Merton and his connection with the East and meditation.  After college, the dogma that was presented at Sunday service such as meditation opens your mind to the devil as well as what I saw while working with the poor and socializing with the elite were in conflict.  I understood the feeling of anomie – I was floating along with the same practice but not buy it and becoming increasingly angry .  I came to feel the philosophy and precepts of Buddhism made sense so I guess I became a Buddhist, stopped the Sunday façade and over time became more compassionate.

When I look at my skin and see wrinkles and less elastic bone covering, I wonder, when it happen.  Thousands of cells had to decide it was time to “go left”.

I went to grad school to learn to be a change agent, social work.   I studied human behavior and techniques for helping people change their lives. I provided hundreds of examples, life choices, and multiple avenues for change.  In the end, it was the person getting up at 2 o’clock in the morning, staring at the face in the mirror and saying, I am not going to do this anymore.  The Time has come.