It’s interesting to observe your own reaction when change presents itself in life.
It may be economic change in your circumstances, it may be a change in
the way you spend your life. A lot of people, as their children grow,
have an opportunity to change their lives, but they have such strong
habits in how they’ve always done things and who they’ve always been,
that they get frightened at the freedom to change when an opportunity
presents itself.
Up until now, they justified their existence by what their karma
commitments are; “I have to be this way,” and I would say that doesn’t
have to be the case. They don’t have to wait for their kids to grow up,
because that waiting becomes their daily routine.
How much of who I was yesterday is defining who I am today? How much can
I allow who I am today to be totally open and tuning and responding to
the situation, which includes everything I was yesterday, but also all
that I will be tomorrow?
And you learn to have less certainty about what the future holds, of who
you’ll be when you grow up, or how it will all come out. Because when I
look at my life now, there is nothing – 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 40
years ago, 50 years ago – everything I thought about who I was and how
it would come out had no similarity at all to the way it is.
Who I am now hardly recognizes who that was. Who was absolutely sure he
would be around all the way through. Who he was at Harvard would have
hospitalized who I am now. And who I am now feels great compassion for
who he was then. I doubt if we’d be much of friends. We would have very
little business with one another. He would be very judgmental of me,
which would be very poignant.
So I have learned since I have gone through so many transformations of
who I know myself to be and how it is, that I must assume that those
will continue. There’s no reason to assume they won’t, although they may
not. Because I can’t know that. So I’m not planning to continue to be
who I am forever. It will keep changing.
- Ram Dass -
