You would never know it- given that I have changed jobs, homes and residences in countries like some people change jeans but I really don’t like change.
I am a guy that gets set in his ways and don’t like to mix things up much once I get comfortable. Saying that, I make the best of a situation when I realize change is coming and there is not much I can do to stop it.
Feeling powerless to stop an oncoming onslaught of change where I don’t know the outcome is not a great feeling.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I know this feeling way too well.
For instance, my divorce was a demanding time in my life where I didn’t know how to make sense of anything around me. It is not something I am going to go into detail about but, at the time, I would have done anything to keep my marriage together. However, my ex already had a new life ready to go and this life didn’t include me.
I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to be in a marriage that can’t be fixed but I suspect for all that go through this, it is change that feels very unsettling.
My answer was to chuck almost everything in my life and move to Hawaii.
I can look at pictures and read journals that I kept that showed living there healed me over the next couple years. I was comfortable and life was great.
Why would I change it?
I realized, Hawaii was a stop-gap in my life and to move forward meant I had to be open to changing my life again.
My answer then was to move to Taiwan which, honestly, the first few days I felt like I made a huge error coming to this island country. I remember sitting on a concrete bench outside a large department store in Taipei, the rain coming down as people rushed by me, thinking I had made the biggest mistake in my life.
I was in a country where I knew hardly anyone, the weather was terrible and I had no idea what I was going to do for a living. I remember like it was yesterday thinking that I had changed my life for the worse.
I ended up spending 10 years in Taiwan and look back at most of those years as fantastic. I don’t want to imply that it was perfect, because it wasn’t, but I learned more and more change was something to tame and embrace, not fear.
Other countries I lived in, especially Australia, made me glad I was up to the challenge to accept new ways of life.
China tested me the most. My job was exactly what I wanted to do but there were many rules by the government, even during that time. I realized this was not the place to settle and call home. I knew I was going to have to change my life again.
I made my home in Wyoming.
Living in Hanna has given me stability and there are many things I can control, for the most part, but change still comes.
I never would have called a pandemic to alter so much of my life and that of others around me. My mother had prepared me over the years that she was not healthy, but I was not really ready when she passed away in March. COVID looks to be the culprit, but they didn’t know much about the disease then, so she wasn’t even tested. Not being allowed a memorial service was hard, but times were what they were.
The Thanksgiving holiday is coming and there will be no chair for her and my stepfather is in a nursing facility that I cannot visit at the moment. I can’t go to Colorado, where I have celebrated Thanksgiving before with friends, because everyone is worried about the spikes in Wyoming. My job of being around people has these folk worried I might bring COVID into their house.
I understand their fears, although we at the paper have protocols to keep us from being exposed. I accept their reasoning and understand Thanksgiving will be me and my furry beasts.
I don’t like it, but it is change I have to accept.
“If it doesn’t kill me, I will be stronger” is a motto I live by and seems appropriate for the times.
The pandemic isn’t the only thing changing life around me.
The United States of America- which has truly been a beacon of democracy throughout the world for so many years-is looking threatened, no matter what political side you are on. I am not so naïve to say there have never been problems with our nation and government but, after living in a communist country where a brutal dictatorship is taking out all opposition, I have always been glad to be American.
I understand not being comfortable with change of administrations, especially when you don’t know the future and a candidate you didn’t want is elected. I was there four years ago.
As the years went by, there were things I agreed with President Donald Trump on, especially his China and Taiwan policies, and other elements of his presidency I didn’t.
When it came time to vote, I did.
The vote was close, to the credit of both candidates.
The outcome was not what many had hoped for, but have we really come so far that we, as a people, believe there are vast conspiracies in our nation to steal an election? Are we so scared of change that we won’t trust the outcome of an election because we don’t want to replace the administration?
It is ironic to me that the reason many Republicans fear the Democratic Party is they feel it has socialistic ways which will lead to communism and democracy will disappear.
As someone who witnessed first-hand the consolidation of power by President Xi-who cares for only the Communist Party, who basically reiterates, anyone who doesn’t support him is out to wreck the country, so they must be enemies-Hong Kong is already paying the price and Taiwan better keep its guard or it may fall victim soon.
Don’t get me wrong, if President Trump has evidence of widespread fraud in so many states, I want to know about it. But so far, there has been none.
I get change is tough. Sometimes we embrace it, other times it is hard to swallow. But it would be sad that, by being so scared of change and what it might bring, we would kill democracy in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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