A meditation on change….

Change is obviously relative. In order to have change or to perceive change, something must also remain the same. Otherwise, it is just chaos without any sense of change.

Change occurs at many different scales.

In order to explore change, I played the piano for a time. Playing different notes obviously makes for quite a different experience. But I also played exactly the same notes and changed the timing. I played the scales up and down, exploring variations in the timing and loudness. I played staccato and legato. I was reminded that the theme to “Joy to the World” is just the scale played down (with proper timing). I played the scale in a higher octave. I played the scale transposed into c#. These were all external changes.

Then, I decided to make “internal” changes. I listened to the quality of the notes. I felt the feeling of the keys on my fingertips. I listened to the spaces between the notes. Of course, to return to the theme of change at different scales, so to speak, sound itself is a dynamic change at several scales. Any give note is vibration but it also diminishes in loudness over time. But this does not seem to happen in a steady fashion. Even one note played seems to have a complex dynamic over time.

I decided to go for a walk. I mainly concentrated on internal changes. That is, I walked and played with changing the way I walked. I pushed off more with my toes. I pumped my arms more vigorously. I turned my body or my hips slightly with the steps. I turned my attention to the sensation of my feet on the ground; to my muscles making the movements; to the smells in the air; to the sounds of my steps; the traffic; mourning doves taking off; a tennis player bouncing the ball against a wall. For a time, I could hear the echo of his hits from a house across the street. I noticed that there was a change in the sound of the ball hitting the wall and hitting his racquet.

I walked by a fountain. The water was coming down in a pattern which, at some level, was unchanged but of course, in minute ways it was changing constantly. From the perspective of the individual water molecules, it was constant change. Some may have stayed for quite a time in the pool. Some might have had more exciting lives for a time.

I watched golfers on the driving range. All were obviously changing the position of the club through space as they attempted to hit the ball. None had mastered the dynamics of change. That is, none of them had the smooth and effortless acceleration of the accomplished golfer. Every swing had one or more glitches resulting from the golfer trying to “make it happen” rather than being one with the flow that is the happening of a great golf swing.

There were dead leaves on the ground. This made me think of the changing seasons. An old woman walked by and, like Yeats, I saw her as the young child she once was. I noticed how the branches of a tree “change” as one looks from the trunk to the branchlets and leaves. I thought of how there is an ever changing pattern of branch overlap as I walked by. These changes help me understand the structure of the tree. I recall that what I see is not the tree, but only the part that is above the ground. It is only the part that is alive right now; I do not see its ancestors or descendants. I do not even see the tree as a seedling or a crushed and fallen stump. I see a snapshot of the tree’s life; a fleeting glimpse only. Even that glimpse, though intricate and beautiful, is only the merest shadow onto the senses I myself possess.

To be alive requires the acceptance of a fatal disease called life. Of course, Life, with a capital “L” goes on and on. Change. Change. Like the song about Bingo the dog.

Change is ubiquitous and inevitable. The only question is which changes to encourage, initiate or try to stem. Typically, it seems to me, it is more powerful to encourage changes you like than to try to stem the inexorable tides of change you abhor.

Teaching. Creativity. Teaching + Creativity –> Skepticism. And yet, I had to admit that I had tried to use creativity myself in teaching. For example, I had taught a required course for RN’s in statistics — a course that they typically had no real desire for. So, I had tried to make it fun, understandable, and provide a way for them to see how it actually was important in their career and their life. For example, I made cartoons to explain the F-test and to help them remember the steps.

And, even among my teachers, there had been those who were creative and encouraged creativity. For example, in my high school English class, I complained that we were underlining verbs and nouns in meaningless and random sentences and that we *recalled* some of this random and meaningless material. Hence, it would be better to use material that had some meaning to it. My teacher encouraged me to run an experiment and indeed, I showed that people in my class really were remembering these meaningless sentences.

Okay. So, maybe teaching and creativity could be positively related and not antithetical. I thought I would give it a try any way. Perhaps I could learn some techniques for additional creativity. That could prove useful.

The course did not seem to carry a warning label however, that the course material was not just “out there” but “in here”! This course required an internaljourney not just learning about “stuff.” Instead of “easy” assignments such as “write a Shakespearean Sonnet about alligators” —which I could probably do in a half hour, it had assignments such as “write something about a topic that is central to your life.” What? How long? What topic? What is central to my life?!

So…such open ended assignments cause me to go in circles. Of course, I can think of *many* things which are central, but which is the most central? Or, are all these things equally important? And, how much of an effort is it worth writing about it? And, do I write about it now, or do I think about it more first? And, will writing about it cause me to “freeze” my ideas when I may want to change what is most central tomorrow? Yikes.

Despite the difficulties, the course was very worthwhile and I recommend it to anyone who has the chance to take this in the future. A few of the habits in particular were things I had fallen out of and been reminded of. For example, the course introduced the notions of curation and remixing. I had long ago discovered that becoming immersed in a field allowed me to be creative in that field; indeed, it forced creativity. But along the way, by being constantly busy at work and required to do things too quickly I had fallen into the habit of relying completely on what I already knew.

The second thing I needed to be reminded of was the importance of tribe. I have always been most productive and had the most fun when working with a group. Yet, it was always easy to find these and now I am in a position where I need to create one or more.

And, finally, one of the reasons open ended assignments are so difficult for me is that it is very hard to know whether I “won” or “finished” or was “successful.” So thinking more deeply about the concept of “failure” was also really useful.