Change

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

Last week, we the students of Queen’s College spent the week over at Richard Ishmael’s. The experience, for me, was an eye-opener in more ways than one. But the thing that struck me the most was by Friday, we’d all settled in, and everything started feeling like routine school again.
But it probably shouldn’t surprise me, after all, we’re young and supposed to be able to adapt. I wonder how it was for the teachers.
Yet, being settled in the same routine at school for seven years, you assume that things couldn’t, shouldn’t and wouldn’t change. Life stretches ahead of you to infinity. But then, every once in a while something as outlandish like a “flea invasion” strikes.  And everything is turned topsy-turvy.
Tuesday felt like the first day of school all over again; with first day jitters and wondering about what the school would be like. So I guess some things never change. First days of school seem to be pretty much the same, whether they’re at the beginning of the term or in the middle of it. But that feeling was probably the only familiar thing about the day.
We had to get used to a school with a completely different layout, different types of seats and of course we had to get used to the completely new schedule.
The whole experience made me think a lot about how things can change, literally in the blink of an eye. One minute everything was normal and the next, voila! We’re transplanted to a completely different school.
From the experience, I think it makes all the difference whether you decide to accept the changes and adapt, or whether you insist on refusing to accept that things change. And sulk.
There are changes in every aspect of life and at every stage in life. People change, society changes, rules change, and laws change. When we say things like “People don’t change” it drives scientists crazy. Because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy, matter, it’s always changing. Morphing. Merging. Melting.
Change is life; refusing to change is stagnation; death and finally extinction. One thing that studying history does is to show so clearly that change is the only constant. And I’m not just talking about culture and society.
Things change, for better or for worse, and we just have to do our very best to prepare ourselves to deal with those changes in the best way we possibly can.
I wonder if this whole ‘flea’ exercise was just a way to prepare me for the change coming up next year when I go off to another school: college.