Resisting Change

It has been said that one definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome. I suspect that that was first said somewhat facetiously, because there is certainly a case to be made for patience and perseverance—in other words, to keep at it until you achieve the desired result.

However, there is also a case to be made for the futility of wanting something to change, but being unwilling to change anything. I see this playing out over and over again in my practice: the person wants her animal to stop being lame or sick or whatever the problem is, but is unwilling to make any substantive changes to what she is doing in regard to the animal. “I just want what I’m doing to work!” is the impossible mandate.

I make this same mistake myself, in various aspects of my life.

I think what is wrong here is a fundamental misunderstanding or a forgetting of our place in the whole. There also seems to be a modicum of arrested development, because as advanced as we think ourselves to be, as enlightened and aware, we are acting like spoiled children when we insist that things work out to our liking.

I sure can understand the seductive pull of the popular “anything is possible; you can have anything you want” credo, promoted in books such as The Secret, Ask and It is Given, and Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, and even in Shakira’s latest pop hit (anything in the world; “anything you want you can make it yours”). I even believed it myself for a time—until I very nearly came unglued with the most intense frustration I’ve ever experienced in my life!

You see, I think this drivel is just another symptom of that fundamental misunderstanding.

We do not get to have whatever we want. And that’s a good thing, because we just never really know the true purpose of anything. At least, not until much later. Here is a beautiful fragment from one of my favourite authors:

“We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric: giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.”

[Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Ulrich Baer in Letters on Life]

Like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images we’ll never see, because we’re a formative and inextricable part of them. Gives fresh meaning to that hackneyed phrase, “the rich tapestry of life.” We are each just one single thread in the rich tapestry of life. How absurd to think that we can or should dictate the final image.

What has this to do with resisting change? Everything, because resistance to change is nothing more than insistence on getting our own way. Good luck with that :-)

More soon,

-Dr. Chris King-

Nature's Apprentice

www.animavet.com