Everything changes
By Wendy Grant

As I start to write this it is snowing out--big fat white blobs of snowflakes changing the world outside from brown to white. So I thought why not use one of those snowflakes to represent how everything changes. In fact can you ever really get a grip on a snowflake? Is it ever static or unchanging? Never. Starting up in the atmosphere a small particle starts to get thrown around in the clouds, each movement changing its shape, its weight, its density, until at some critical moment the snowflake is heavy enough to fall and as it falls it is changing. It's evolving into its unique snowflake shape. It comes to rest on the earth or on a windshield or on your hat and it continues to change. It merges with other snowflakes, its distinct shape blurring, blending, compacting or melting. Our snowflake may become ice, melt into water, evaporate into gas. Try catching one to capture its beauty--instantly it changes and it's on to the next moment in the snow process. Everything is like that snowflake--everything changes--some things like mountains and bad habits change more slowly, other things like sunsets and our thoughts more quickly. We know that everything changes but we repeatedly act as if we don't quite believe it or live as if we can defy the inevitable. We resist, we put a great deal of energy into our planning, our expectations, and our opinions. Then we get upset and anxious as we watch all that we thought of as certain and solid shift and change like a snowflake in the sun. We build our self images and our views of the world to feed our want of certainty and security and continue to reinforce them as they melt around us. The resistance and the grasping just cause more pain and more struggle. All this effort aimed at holding on, at keeping things and ourselves from changing, where does it come from? We make it up--our minds are good at it! So as we say the words 'everything changes', we need to let the part of us that resists this truth to let go. Part of us needs convincing that life really is easier if we accept that change is the only constant. Everything changes asks us to trust, to have faith--not in our constructs but in the larger process that is constantly at play. We see just a small piece of the process and base our ideas and plans on that maybe unable to see or to fathom the larger picture. Everything changes means that there is no need to overcome, to fight, to impose our will--that all we need to do is to let go, move along with the changes without labeling them good or bad, to trust the process and to stop trying to be separate from the process. We can no more hang on to a moment than we can a snowflake. And now I'll type this up before I change my mind!