Change is fundamental and the pursuit of change is as varied as New Year’s Resolutions. Most often we focus on changing what we consciously are doing. Looking at change as a foundational law of life can help us on our journeys of discovery and see others more clearly.
From Our Evolving Minds: Change in Context
Essentially Darwin, and evolutionary theory after him, saw organisms as being in the world, where change is a complex interplay between the internal world (what later would be understood as genes) of the organism and the external world in which they exist. This begins the discussion not at the level of the individual, where debates of experience and nativism, nature and nurture, play out, but at the level of relationship, of the interaction of organism and environment. To focus on one or the other is to ignore that the fundamental unit of reality is relational interaction.
Allowing for change helps us see others and ourselves as constantly in flux, and while we may still rightly disagree with particular behaviors, we can still see one another as having the potential to do something new. Change is fundamental and guaranteed, what works today may not work tomorrow, so let’s treat each other with compassion.
Resources:
Leading the Life You Want by Stewart D. Friedman