The mathematical symbol for change is a neat little triangle Δ. I can remember drawing it on my notebook with a pencil and wondering why my pencil ended up back where it started. That pretty shape is little more than shorthand for futility, like a dog chasing its tail. There has to be something better.
And yet, I have to admit that the clean little package contains an uncomfortable reminder that most attempts to change actually don’t result in much of anything new at all. How many times does a person have to quit something before they actually quit it? For every last cigarette, every for-real-this-time break-up, every “give it over to god”, there are 500 re-runs of the old bad habits. The cold truth is that most attempts to change revert back to uncomfortably familiar territory. Continue reading “CH@NGE”