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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

DON'T LOOK NOW, WE'RE CHANGING

“Sorry,” she said, “I don’t have change”

..And I wondered…

This whole situation these days is again about shyly asking for, with the ever present fear of rejection - for change...

Well, whatever happens to the change…I mean we hear this all the while, I don’t have change ( so please give me) and you usually  90% of the time at least, give it on demand……so what do they do with all the change they pile up ? If they don’t pile up where does it all go?

“Bring the change you want”

Who said it? Barack Obama? Gandhi? Martin Luther King? Mark Twain?

Correct answer – Bus conductor in state transport bus Saar.

So we don’t know where change goes….for that matter do we know from where it comes? The only constant is change said someone. And then we had Mr. Obama famously say,” In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need “

So America was supposed to change. But what about the rest of us? Well , “ the old order changeth, giving place to new”….but to me that happens every day, every minute, every second we are in a different world than what it was in the last second, minute or day or year, but we don’t measure change in such tiny increments. We wait for big milestones. So America has changed because we had an underdog as a President who in his own words, “neither the pollsters not the pundits were ready to give much of a chance” at the start of his campaign. But do you think America changed WHEN he became President? If you look around, not really. America had begun changing years ago, getting READY for the acceptance of this guy as the President even though at a sub-conscious level, slowly but definitely a day at a time – small measure indeed for a large nation, but that’s what eventually propelled a man with his background into The Oval Office.

So if a nation like the US of A which has been a traditional holder of conservative values has changed so much, where are we? What are we changing? Or changing from? Or changing into?

Hark back to 1985.  Most of my readers would have been just about born then or later (or at least imagine so), That was the year our then Prime Minister late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had famously remarked, “Our administrative machinery is cumbersome, archaic and alien to the needs and aspirations of the people. It has successfully resisted the imperative of change “

“You must be the change you want to see in the world” Gandhi M.K

But is it so easy to embrace change? Personally speaking, yes and no. Yes because one gets bored pretty fast of doing the same thing and wants to make it better all the time, No, because at another level one is not prepared to change…Happens to all of us. We are happy to change a phone or even a car maybe, but the decision to change an address is more stressful and painful, the decision to change a partner, even more so. Interestingly, one of the funny things about the societies where partners are changed frequently is that the brands of the cigarettes or booze or drugs don’t change! So you see, we are ready to change, but only at a certain level, not at every level, every time

So in my personal view, change is like drinking water, some of it, measured quantities, with regularity. But overdo it and it can be dangerous. It’s worth noting that on its own, the planet took thousands and millions of years to change geographically and the resultant life forms, but manual intervention caused both to change in relatively extremely short bursts of time with disastrous consequences for both.

You’d be wondering where is this all leading to . I mean I’ve changed my thought tracks and my style of writing every few paragraphs.

But that IS the point.

To demonstrate change.

Now hopefully you think different than you did before reading this.
If yes, I have changed something in you.
If not, you are highly resistant and wary of change. Was it because you’ve had more than your share of change?
Too much of change is also a pain. Jingles and jangles every time you move. Better give it to her who asks for it.

And yes, if you benefit from it, Keep The Change!

  
 (C) Anurag Mathur

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