Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
About a year ago, I attended a Company course on ‘Managing Change’. As with most of such courses there was a psychological bent. The subject matter included concepts and perceptions that gelled with my intuition. One doesn’t need a degree to recognise that change is a fact of life. I doubt that any of us can say that a paradigm shift is a breeze. Galloping towards uncertainty is not a normal response for anyone. Many of us don our ostrich feathers and get the grit between our teeth until we forget why and resign ourselves to days of gale-force winds. Control freaks have a particularly hard time going with the flow.
I suppose a lot depends on whether the change is happening to you or you are effecting it. I should embrace it. Innovation has always been a passion of mine; I love new things, improvements, advancing technology. Give me one problem to solve and I’ll mull over it until I’ve found a solution. Give me two and I might retreat from normal life. Trust me with any more and I will put off going to bed. Why? Multi-tasking and dreams don’t aid sleep. Speaking of dreams, sometime between the dawn and sunset of my youth, I realised that they rarely come true without action.
My dilemma, dear Dwight, is that I’m having a hard time reconciling my passion for transformation with my resistance to it. My feet are stuck in the tracks, but my heart wants to leap onto the train. I wonder if there is such a thing as circumstantial schizophrenia.
It’s time for me to emerge from the cobwebs, shake off the dust, take myself for a makeover and buy a new map.
Dwight makes a good point. The train is in sight. My feet are free from their shackles and I’m expecting the engine to arrive any minute. The tracks remain in position, stoically accusing me of abandonment as I set my feet on the platform. I’ve done what calculations I can, balanced the cost of leaving with the cost of living. I’m ready for the ride of my life. Chances are that I’ll reach my destination with a pocket full of change. The journey will be worth it but not over …