Change

Change is always a great deal harder than what it made out to be by the media. Change is portrayed as perhaps something a bit painful but something which is moved through fairly easily(cue montage here, as our hero goes through taking actions to improve his life; the cuts are short: smiling at someone here, helping someone change a tire there, as a either a 1980's song or sweeping orchestral piece plays in the background). The reality is that even the easiest of changes is a far harder exercise than one can imagine.

It's also difficult because we do not value the process of change as we should.

Too often it seems that we focus on being, rather than becoming. Again, thank our fixation on media and entertainment for this. We pay the attention to our stars and celebrities ("heros" is hardly a term I would use) as if we were worshipping a god, looking at the radiance of what they are or what they accomplish. Seldom if ever do we consider where they came from (maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a short 5 minutes retrospective on their life) or the great amounts of work they had to pour into their life. It's not even as if we are encouraged to see it; instead, it's as if we're actually discouraged from looking at it. Look at what is, not at what it took to get there.

The result? Too often the generation that is or the generation that is coming give up too early, seeing that if things don't instantly "change", there's no point in starting. The reward - the thing that you are becoming as you change - is lost in the need for instant gratification and instant reward.

How is this combated? Biographies are one good way. Reading the stories of peoples lives is a great way to see them as they were and as they became. The change over the course of their lives, as recorded in a book, is helpful because it clearly lays out how they changing on the journey as they became what we know them as.

Another is simply to remind ourselves that the result of the change - the outcome - is only one aspect of the change, and maybe not even the best one. If I achieve a weight, I've accomplished something - but the changes in lifestyle and better health I enjoy are things that occurred along the way and are just as significant.

If we fail in this, if we lose the ability to communicate the totality and difficulty of change, what we will be left with is a generation who will become increasingly unable to accomplish anything except that which is easy and immediately gratifying. And easy and immediately gratifying is hardly the sort of foundation to build anything on.