Writing in coffee shops is an interesting experience. Even though I am not there to listen in on conversations, in fact, I try to block them out, sometimes it can’t be helped.
One Friday morning, I didn’t arrive early enough to get my usual by-myself-seat, so I ended up on the back bench waiting for my single table to open up.
As is often the case, a group of men began filing in for their morning meeting. Two men greeted each other and in response to the “How ya doing,” question the other man answered, sadly. “My company is being sold.”
Up to this point I had kept my eyes to myself, but I was curious. If it was his company being sold wouldn’t he be happy?
But when I glanced his way I realized that although he had called it his company, it wasn’t a company he owned. As he explained to his friend, it was a company that he had worked at for fifty years.
Of course, he thought of it as his company. But the change that was now going to happen was not his choice.
From the dejected look on his face and the snippets of conversation I heard before my little table opened up, this was not a change he would ever have chosen. But he had worked there for fifty years.
Didn’t he know that sooner or later that choice would be made for him unless he made it for himself?
Change is going to happen. Not going to. Is happening. Change is always happening. Either we choose the change, or it chooses us.
That’s the truth of the world that we live in. Some changes we don’t have any ability to stop or divert or make them go our way. But many of them we do.
The man sitting next to me must have known that whether or not his company would be sold, he would be leaving someday soon. Why didn’t he choose to leave in his own way rather than be forced to leave?
The Sam Cooke song, “Change is Gonna Come,” is a promise. A promise of better times.
When change happens that we didn’t choose, because sometimes change is chosen for us, we do get to choose our response to it. When we choose to embrace the present change, change no longer controls us.
We might wish that we could go back to the “good ole days,” but we not only can’t go back, but some of those good ole days were not all that good. Accept change, and the present can become the good ole days.
Accept change because life is change. It is never static. There is no way to stop change. We can’t run and hide from it or make life return to what it was.
Choose to change before change chooses you and life will feel much better.
What if we thought of choosing change as something that produces harmony?
Think of music.
Is just one note that never changes music? Well yes, it could be. But doesn’t it become more beautiful when that note changes? Add in more change: new notes and different cords and what happens?
It is the addition of additional notes or voices, or instruments, expressing the changing notes in their own way, that makes each piece of music unique and beautiful.
It’s the same way with life. One note lives can be good, but the music of change can make our lives extraordinary. Accept change. Choose to change. Because change is gonna come. Let’s make it good.
I have to close with two of my favorite two jokes.
What did Buddha say to the hotdog vendor?
“Make me one with everything.”
What did the hotdog vendor say to Buddha when he asked for his change?
“Change comes from within.”
Yes, it does. Choose to change before change chooses you, and live the full music of your life.
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
