Change...

The changing of the seasons always reminds me of the rhythm of life’s changes. It reminds me that perhaps the most important preparation for life we can provide our students is the preparation for dealing with constant and often unpredictable change. The blessings and challenges of life move to and fro in our lives to a rhythm whose music we sometimes hear, but more often we turn a deaf ear.

This seems a good time to remind ourselves of what our children need (as do we) in order to best cope with change. It is best summarized in oft-used aphorisms about “roots and wings.” In our case I suppose the roots we help grow are faith, love, truth, beauty, family, and knowledge of the laws of the world. We help them build strong wings when we nurture their dreams, teach them the skills of self-directed learning and cooperation, and help them see beyond themselves and their wants.

Whether your child is three, in the 8th grade, or somewhere in between, there is much change coming. Some you can anticipate, such as learning to read or tie a shoe, experiencing their last EDS soccer or volleyball game or final chapel. Some changes can never be predicted. The important thing is to be prepared.

Below are a few thoughts from others throughout the ages who have contemplated the presence of change as a constant in our lives. I’d love for you to comment on your favorite one.

Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant. -Anthony D’angelo

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin

While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day. -Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. -Eric Hoffer

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. -Charles Dubois

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. -Anais Nin

The future has a way of arriving unannounced. -George Will

“Nothing” is carved in granite. – Sculpture on Ned Murray’s office bookshelf

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines. - Unknown

Henri Bergson: To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

James Baldwin: For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

John Dewey (father of American education): The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

John F. Kennedy: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

Katherine butler Hathaway: A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.

Leo Tolstoy: Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

M. Scott Peck: The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.

Mary Antin, 1912: We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ours elves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

Nelson Mandela: Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Ovid: All things change; nothing perishes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Life is a progress, and not a station.

Thomas Hardy: Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

Unknown: Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

W.E.B. Du Bois: He who rejects change is the architect of decay.

The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming

When you are through changing, you are through. ~Bruce Barton

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. ~Pauline R. Kezer

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author Unknown

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. ~Bertold Brecht