My Enemy...My Friend

This morning I watched my wife Jan go to the cupboard and take out her daily vitamin and calcium pills from their bottles, as she does each morning. I, who had snagged from CVS freebie plastic pill containers with seven handy little compartments, asked her why she doesn’t use one of them. “That way you’d only have to take your pill bottles out once a week instead of once a day”. She looked at me incredulously and said: “…why would I want to do that? I’m perfectly fine and content with doing it the way I’m doing it.” I grumbled something about efficiency and cleverly omitted the fact that I use the container to help remind me to take my damned pills – something for which her methodical abilities require no assistance.

Of course, she was right. What is the point of making a change when no change is necessary? It made me wonder if my almost evangelistic belief that there is always a better way of doing things (if one just looks hard enough) may be self-defeating. One might suggest such is the origin of the phrase don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The desire for change, in and of itself, has no explicit value. Only the value of the actual proposed change can be judged. To those who might disagree, pointing out the individuals who have championed or actually developed the many technological advancements we enjoy, I would suggest that it was dissatisfaction with the status quo that was probably the greater motivator…and doubtless money as well.

Still, I wonder. Is a desire for change per se a necessary attribute allowing us to successfully adapt? Perhaps so. There is change swirling about us continually - tied to events, tied to time, or tied to mystery for example. How do we react when what makes us content doesn’t seem consistent with the environment that surrounds us? Isn’t it a common reaction to blame “the world” or one of its many components as the cause of why this or that just isn’t the same? In spending a career working with “seniors” (say 70 and up) I noticed that those who most acutely felt the stresses of age were those to whom felt their lives abandoned. They felt they had lived a lifetime only to find that what was comfortable, what was dependable, and what had shaped trust was not clearly identifiable in the world around them. The anguish that assumption creates is a tragic consequence for individuals in the last period of their lives.

Maybe there is contentment itself in recognizing and appreciating the impermanence of all things? Some years ago I developed an infection in my sinuses and ears. For unfortunate reasons I was unable to get to a doctor, so I stuck out the illness. For about three days I lost most of my hearing. I got a kick out of driving my old pickup truck, as the low murmur of its normally ruckus engine sounded like a Mercedes-Benz E Class. When my hearing came back it also brought an unwelcomed enemy – tinnitus or ringing in the ears. I have it to this day.

At first I tried to read whatever I could about tinnitus. I wasn’t encourage to see that one, there was no cure for it, and two, some people are driven half (or entirely) mad by the condition. To consider a noise over which you have no control one could understand such a reaction. Mine is primarily in my left ear and frequently when it is quiet outside (as in the evening) or if that ear is covered the noise can sound like a relentless high-pitched car horn. However, I did find some good information, although I had to modify it for my own purposes. I found I could conquer the ringing, not by trying to overcome it, but rather by listening to it...and accepting it. This change that had taken place in my life was okay…in fact it was better than okay. It helped me to step out of the possible chains inflexibility can cause in any of us. Now at night when I lay with the left side of my head on the pillow I attentively marvel at the volume of the ringing, but when I’m through listening it essentially goes away. It has become my friend and I'm better for it. If I didn’t have the desire to embrace change could I have done this, or would I be pounding my head against a wall? I’m not sure.

I read from the internet an explanation about the baby/bath water saying. It suggested that the origin was from centuries before when an entire family would take their weekly or monthly bath in the same bath water. The baby, it said, was normally the last to be bathed and by that time you could just imagine what the water looked like. It was joked (back then) that the mother could lose the baby in the muck. I like the explanation, true or not. But it does make me think that unless we can adapt, we may be cleaning with the same water too long and lose that which is dear. Maybe a love of change helps.