The other day, I was talking to my friend Sandi. She started to go on a rant about how when she went to the store to buy freeze pops, they had changed the varieties. There was now strange and unusual flavours like mango and white. She wanted to know what had happened to the red, orange and green flavours (Sandi is one of those rare people who can taste colours). She went on to say that she didn’t like change.
A little bit later in the evening she asked me to be in charge of making burgers for an upcoming barbecue. I made the mistake of saying that I was working on a special recipe for them. She then became quite upset and demanded that I make the exact same burgers that I usually made because that was the type she liked. I reassured her that I only meant that some of the fixings would be different. I was going to have multi-grain buns, jalapeno-mozza cheese (as opposed to the Krapt Shingles[TM] slab of cheese flavoured chemicals that most people use) and a chilli-lime mayo. I promised the burgers would be just as she liked.
Her response was, “You’re what’s wrong with the world, Ernie. There’s no need for chilli-lime mayo. Why do things need to be changed?”
I pondered this notion for a while and I came to realize that we are constantly surrounded by change. Everything that we have now has changed out of something else. For example; earlier that night, Sandi and I had ordered a fully loaded pizza and chicken wings. If you think about it though, originally pizza was a thin, crisp crust with a very simple tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella cheese cooked in a wood fired oven, no other toppings. Modern pizzas that you get from a big chain barely resemble the original recipe at all. Somewhere along the way someone said, “I think we need to change this.” The same goes for chicken wings. The very first time a chicken was cooked it was most likely spit roasted, whole, over an open fire. Then somebody came along and said, “We need to change this so that we only cook the wings by themselves. That would be better.”
The cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, the Blue Beaver Beer we drink, even the toilet paper we use everyday; it has all changed from something else and it is a guarantee that it will change again into a new variety. In fact stop to consider this; we wouldn’t even bee here if our ancestors hadn’t said to themselves, “You know Europe is pretty cool and all, but I feel like a change. Let’s go check out the ‘New World”.
We cannot escape change, it happens constantly; we must learn to embrace it. Well, unless you have yourself put into a coma. Then (subjectively speaking) nothing would ever change.
It starts out at a stand-still as you get yourself situated, with a little help from people who have been around the roller coaster for a lot longer than you. Then you start going forward; a little bit hesitant and shaky as you leave the station. Next, you start climbing up and up and up. You begin to wonder whether or not it’s worth all that climbing. Eventually you reach the top and as you begin to see over the edge you think to yourself, “That doesn’t look so bad. I can’t imagine what all the hype is about.”