By Dr. Dencio S Acop
Change is inevitable in our lives! It is, in fact, a given in everything in the universe as far as we know. It is said that every passing second spells change. From the moment we are born until the day we pass-on, we would have gone through countless changes through our earthly journey. Change is unavoidable. Good or bad these changes are, we go through them. I guess there are changes we could avoid. Whatever these changes are, we certainly exercise our free will to decide on where to go from where we are one way or the other. I’d like to believe that, as rational human beings go, people usually follow utilitarian ethical principles in doing so. The greatest good for the greatest number ought to work just fine for any person. Through these musings, I’d like to say that while change is a constant and may not be welcomed by some, it also has its benefits which could turn out even better for those who undergo it. Some of these changes include the phases of our lives, migrating, politics, and conversion.
The first change I’d like to talk about is life’s phases. Life is such a wonderful journey. From the innocence of childhood, we grow into maturity on through adulthood. We are fortunate if we had parents who loved and nurtured us, teaching the foundational values that carried us through life’s difficult challenges. From the care-free life of being a teenager, we are forced to suddenly mature by the necessity of getting a job in order to be independent from our parents and survive. We go through single life for a while until we become bored of it. Or not! Then we fall in love and get married. Soon, we have children. This is, what I always call, the most selfless phase in our lives as we forget ourselves and get focused on those tiny creatures who totally depend on us. Parenting is bittersweet, but it is the most rewarding experience a human being can get. I once heard from a daughter who is now a mother that “days are long but years are fast”. This is a line spoken by parents. When parents see their children graduate from college, images when those now young adults were still cute little babies and cheeky monkeys, suddenly flood their memories, and tears of joy amidst their smiles, begin to fall. Then, those children marry. The parents now see their kids walk the oft-repeated path they did. Soon, the married children have kids. And the parents now are grandparents. I’ve always said that “parenthood is one of life’s best gifts and that grand-parenthood is a bonus beyond words”. We work to earn a living. Then, we retire. Life continues to flourish even beyond retirement. One can get widowed. It is inevitable that a husband or wife dies ahead of the other. Whether one remarries or not, life nevertheless continues even through grief. I got remarried to my second wife, Joy, after losing my first wife, Joji, to cancer. Joy, like me, also lost her spouse to illness. She and I both were married for just about the same length of time (33-34 years). Likewise, the two of us are grandparents. We similarly take time to be with our grandchildren no matter how far they are. As I write these lines, she is with hers in California while I am with mine Down Under. While we lose through the phases of our lives, we also gain in return to make us whole again.
The second change is migrating. People may move to other places in their lives for various reasons. Such migration may be due to the lives and freedom of people being threatened like the Jews during World War II or Christians forced out of the Middle East in recent years. Other people move for better opportunities or to experience life in other continents and cultures. Some move, temporarily or permanently, to better practice their professions or just see the rest of the world. Still others do so for business reasons. People from poor and troubled lands find even the worst jobs in First World countries, opportunities they lost in their own homelands, in order to support their families back home. There are multiple reasons why people travel to other places in the world. We may be familiar with the travails of travel because we have done it ourselves as well as some members of our families. Personally, I consider migrants to be among the most heroic people in the world for their pioneering and indomitable spirit, selfless courage, and resilience to make it through no matter what. While leaving home marked an enduring loss in the hearts and minds of migrants, finding a new home and thriving in it despite the odds is a gain for them and their succeeding generations that is truly remarkable. The barriers weathered and endured by migrants are herculean: distance, weather, language, culture, hostility, discrimination, and even outright violence. But expanding one’s limited horizons for real are just some of the welcome changes brought about by travel. The world is full of iconic places beckoning us to visit them at least once through our short lifetimes. Think of people you know who have braved the unknown from the all too familiar. Do we really know about their difficult journey and what they must have gone through? I have a lot of respect for them. And I do know because I too have migrated, and have people close to me who did. But even as I edify them, I also must say that this edification does not extend to migrating criminals and suspects evading justice. In leaving the old for the new, we lose the familiar but also gain new horizons that will soon become familiar making us whole again.
The third is politics. Citizens get the chance to collectively change the course of their lives when elections come. Thanks to George Washington who pioneered selfless political leadership by voluntarily stepping down from power even when he had the opportunity to extend his stay in it forever! The self-sacrificing first leader of America advocated fixed terms for the United States president rejecting calls by party-mates otherwise. The deviating behavior of the new leader of the free world was in fact a change from what used to be the endless rule of tyrants across feudal lands in Europe and elsewhere. Following independence, Americans enabled change between citizens who advocated strong central government and those who prioritized states’ rights. Eventually, this advocacy for change evolved into two major political parties whose predominance swung between left of center and right of center. The conservative and liberal debates now are settled through the ballot after terms of office expire. While the elections force formal changes in people’s lives, informal ones come about before and after consequent to these changes. In short, politics can deeply influence lives by encouraging, enabling, and enacting policies that define what and how individuals should behave. While policy-making, executive action, and judicial decisions enforce normative behavior, they may also kindle the fires of rebellion that refuse to be bound by such regulation. Consequent seeds of rebellion soon find ripples that extend to the far reaches of like-minded advocates further developing until they become forces to be reckoned with. Such is the history and process of political change. The vanquished eventually become the victors and tables are turned. Men will then think they have finally won the peace that will last a thousand years. But, fallen as men are, that aspired-for peace only lasts a second. And the cycle of change continues once again. Always seeking the balance that makes peoples and nations whole.
Finally, there’s conversion. When man has exhausted himself in his search for utopia, he either kills himself or finds God. There is no middle ground. Man is either for God or against God. The Universal Principles of Human Rights define the fundamental dignities of man. They came about in an attempt to change the world’s propensity for self-destruction following World War II. The formal declaration of these rights meant to institutionalize lessons learned so that another world war can never occur. Practically the entire world signed on to the convention. But while the choice of the good over the bad has predominantly been the world’s position to date, then how come the world appears to be on the road to self-destruction once again? The sins of the past are reappearing as if the wars that settled them never taught man his lesson. Such is man’s folly it seems; for man never learns. But this much I know: He who is not with God is against Him; and he who is against God ultimately scatters. There is no middle ground. The left of center, center, and right of center are merely those still undecided or lost. What has been going on as man’s history since his creation is a tug-of-war between good and evil. This world is no utopia. It is a battleground. And the battleground is a terrain constantly changing, scarred by the strategies and tactics of the contending forces. One is either a member of the Army of Light or the Army of Darkness. Unless those in between wake up (and change for the better) before the dawn of victory that is the Light’s, they will be mowed down even before they realized what hit them. Even at its height, the glory of man was already befallen by his broken nature. Only the glory of the Perfect God can make man whole. Ever.
To conclude, our earthly journey is just full of changes that we either sink or swim with them. I’ve discussed just four of these changes. The first change involves the various phases in our lives from childhood to retirement. The second one I talked about describes the challenges but also rewards of migrating to another place. The third ponders the role of change through the contentious issue of politics. And the fourth reflects on man’s conversion nagging at his spirit. Through it all, these changes make us reminisce through our lives on this earth and perhaps wonder how much or how little we’ve learned. They force us to realize, for instance, how much we’ve given or received. And make us wish we’d given more than we received. Those changes now make us hope that from our diminishing bodies, we can somehow be reborn again in order to undergo a final change.
