Justine's Journal #36

52 Weeks 500 Words

This is how it began: Justine (not her real name) decided to write 500 words (or as near as), anything goes, per week for 52 weeks. She would then submit it for anonymous posting, via me, her friend. Perhaps a pattern will emerge from her words, but at this stage it’s more an experiment I have agreed to share in. I’ll attempt to draw conclusions at the end of this. Stay tuned if this resonates with you.

Week 36

"Change is something that comes to all of us. Sometimes change is mighty and really upsets the status quo we believe we live with, and sometimes it’s in the small things that serve to tweak the way we think.

In the many journal entries I have now shared with you, you may have come across this sate of being. In every post there was something that spoke of change. Big ones, yes, like the stalker I prefer not to dwell on, and meeting and reconnecting with my brother (and the concept premonition, which I’m still working with before I submit an entry to this journal). Small ones, too, in every entry, such as watching kids playing and realising how we see people with our perceptions, rather than with objectivity, or realising a set of Lotto numbers is not luck, and so forth.

My point is change happens almost all the time. Generally we are unaware, sometimes we take note, and at other times we actually examine it. Take this, for example. You wake up and the sun is shining. You plan an outing to the local park with your kids, and you prepare a picnic and pack your car with blanket and basket. And then it starts to rain, but you have just pulled up at the park and you don’t want to give up on a day out. What do you do? Maybe you pop into McDonald’s or a pizza place, or you go watch a movie instead. Your day changed, did it not? Yes, we know these accidental changes happen to us all the time, the expectation of it is part of the normal routine, and yet it remains change. Perhaps you then had a laugh with your kids across a table in restaurant, rather than lying alone on your blanket watching them on the swings, and that is something you didn't foresee in the morning while looking out into a sun filled day.

Many of us are cautious of change. We prefer things to stay exactly as they are, for then we are able to control our surroundings and our feelings. If we’re happy, why mess with it, right? I put to you we learn and grow if we acknowledge what is new, different, altered, difficult, strange and so forth.

Imagine your daughter telling you over her fries that she would like to start a vegetable garden out back, when you didn't know she loved to see things grow. Or your son says he liked the program about mountains, when you thought only his computer interested him. You learned something, and it is change. Now you will go forward knowing their horizons begin to broaden and you are able to nurture it.

Do not be afraid of change, even when it hurts, even when the lessons are painful, for when you emerge on the other side you are made new. Those experiences create you daily, and that is real life. Expecting everything to remain as is can never be real."