Disenthrallment

"What would be the point of living if we didn't let life change us?"

--from Downton Abbey

If you want eternity, and eternal truth, and rest, and certainty, death is the place to be. To be alive is to change. To be alive is to become something we have not been, from the moment of conception on. Perhaps even before that, all the way back to that thunderous explosion of something from nothing: the Big Bang!

What is sadder than a person who almost stops learning? Who almost stops changing? To really be set in one's ways is to lie in a box.

Sometimes we do not like the changes that are inevitable in the course of life: getting old, getting wrinkles, getting a little forgetful, getting gray, getting rheumatism. But that is what happens to living things. We change.

We also learn, and begin to understand things. "Aha!", we say, "Now I understand!" That is to live, and to change. To change is to see a new generation come to take our places, and another generation behind that. To change is to delight in a new grandchild, and to discover a new idea. It is to come to believe what we never believed before.

As he pressed for the end of slavery, Lincoln said: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

To change is to disenthrall ourselves. It is to liberate ourselves from the dogmas of the quiet past. It is to think and act in new ways. It is to live. To really live!

Let the preachers and politicians be content to make a virtue of eternal truths. What is the point of living if we do not change?

Comments

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