The change I seek

Photo credit: Marianne Møllmann 2024

Sometimes I wonder how we got here. As I write this, I am watching the sun rise on the water of the lake across the street, hearing geese take off to continue south.

Geese have been around for millions of years. Humans, only about 200,000. How did we get from not knowing how to make fire, not having tools to save water, to this? It has not only been a massive journey of physical inventions and adaptations, but also of adaptation of the mind.

This is what I think of when people complain of changing societies and how things aren’t how they used to be. What are they even talking about? Change is a constant. Change brought us clean water, heat, and the ability to store food for the winter. Change brought us medicine and clothes. We humans are truly endlessly inventive. The geese also adapted, of course, but to a much lesser degree.

As I look out my window, I also see the unhoused man sleeping on the bench in the cold. I see cars zipping by in the morning rush. People walking fast to get to their work or appointments, dogs on leashes, children crying or subdued. Is all of this really necessary? The inequality, the manufactured urgency of work, of school, the tying down of other species? It all feels too literal this morning.

Change is a constant. Every second we make micro-decisions that affect our lives and those of others. We cannot know what all the consequences are, hundreds of thousands years out in the future. But we can feel into what they mean now: is this how we can best practice non-attachment, non-violence, non-excess? Is this how we construct the community we want?

From where I’m sitting, we have never been in a place of harmony with the earth and each other. The changes I seek are not to go back but to move forward, towards a place where our inventiveness is used for love.