Change is Awesome

I spent my whole first year at Centenary taking FYE, a course that taught how to deal with change and uncertainty gracefully. During that time, all of us were required to read a book put together by Centenary's staff called Negotiating Uncertainty. Everyone hated it. Some people even burned their copies after finals. The other day on the metro I saw a girl carrying a bag that said "CHANGE IS AWESOME" and I wondered how, in the past year, this phenomenon has come about, because CHANGE has always been something people seemed to struggle with.

This is how I know I'm not in college anymore: I got up Saturday morning, my precious Saturday morning, while Tim was still asleep, and I re-read almost all of of Negotiating Uncertainty. Luckily for me, Dr. Shelburn pulled out a perfect quotation from Charles S. Peirce that describes--I feel--a lot of what we've gone through in the past eight years.

"The person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed." Charles S. Peirce

I don't think it was intentional. If there's anything I re-learned from re-reading Negotiating Uncertainty, which I now think everyone in America should be required to do, it's that people behave the way they do because they're not equipped to cope with all they're forced to deal with.

We vote for people because we believe that they're capable of dealing with things that we ourselves are not capable of dealing with, and that they will represent our best interests. I think the reason that Barack Obama and the idea of CHANGE holds so much appeal is not just because he appears so utterly capable, so profoundly well-equipped to handle a changing world, and not only because he represents a change from the "old" way of thinking, but because for the past eight years, we've had leaders who refuse to acknowledge CHANGE at all--and Obama so obviously embraces it.

We've had people in power who are convinced that truth will lead to us to the point aim at, but are not ready to find out the truth if the truth means accepting that things have changed.

Things have changed.

And in many ways I'm glad to say that they have, but it makes me sad to see that we haven't dealt with change or uncertainly gracefully, and it's gotten us into a dreadful mess. That, I suppose, is why HOPE is also awesome, in the truest sense of the word "awesome." It's a wonderful thing to see HOPE and CHANGE together in the same time and place. Sometimes I think I can't possibly love this country any more than I already do, and then its people amaze me even more.