The way of the world

When Sweet Hubby and I adopted Bandy and Angel, they were 5 1/2 months old, small and sweet, able to curl up together in any of the fluffy beds on the cat trees in the living room.  Now, after only 6 months, they are so big that one of them fills each bed.  Angel no longer comes up onto my pillow in the mornings for loving.  Bandy is established as the alpha.  Only Bandy gets in our laps now.

I've recently learned that one of Seattle's best mid-sized theaters is closing after 33 years.  This was the first theater recommended to me when I moved here.  I've acted there twice and seen many of their fine productions.

Our local chocolatier  has been bought by a licorice manufacturer.  The storefront will remain open, but the factory, which used offer tours, is being shut down and 60 staffers laid off.

I mourn when I encounter these and so many other changes.  I love what I know, and it's upsetting to have to continually readjust to that which replaces what was.  The only way I can be at peace with this sorrow is to remember that change is the constant in life.  (Now there's an oxymoron for you.)  

I loved my neighborhood the way it was when I first moved here, and don't always like the ways it is changing - but it was changing before I got here as well.  And changed before that and before that, going all the way back to when it was pure forest, and then cleared for farming and ranching, and then became residential, sparse at first and now packed with houses.  And it will continue to change, as smaller single family dwellings give way to big houses, or rows of townhouses, or condo complexes.

Change is the way of the world.  When I'm able to maintain that perspective, then I can keep my footing and accept how things are in the moment.  And, of course, some changes are very much for the better and the good.  But a lot of what has changed seems to me like losses.  How much time everyone spends in front of one screen or another, and I include myself, is so very different than what I remember of life even a couple of decades ago.  But that's simply how it is now.  No sense in wishing it otherwise or asking: Do children still get out and play?  Do friends still get together?  Do we all still get out into nature?

I certainly understand my parents better now when I remember how they used to say "You have no idea how things used to be, you have no idea what has been lost."  It was ever thus.  May I have the grace to flow with changes without resistance.