Transitions II

I'm stuck on transitions. Deep down inside I wish for things to stay the same. I have been very slowly reading the self-help classic "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck. Besides being a work of psychological art, it also offers insight into humanity and worldview. Recently I came across a passage that detailed the relationship between change, suffering, and mental illness, for which Scott gives a very general and I find very inclusive definition. He describes the ability of emotionally and psychologically healthy people to grow out of their world view, generally through suffering and depression, into a new and more appropriate world view that enables them to interact well with their community. Those who are unable to realize this change, to go through suffering, are those who suffer, at some level, from mental illness, and will never realize their potential as emotionally and psychologically healthy people. Sometimes I hate the truth.

I find myself very bothered by this description of health, probably because it eludes me. Change comes very slowly for me. I want things to remain static. My best technique for remaining unchanged is isolation. I very easily bury myself in my studies, hide behind walls of silence, and quench signs of emotional health with my fear rejection. I find it very easy, like I am sure most people do, to remain the same. To have the same fears as I had five years ago, to think the same way as I did in college, to interact relationally as though I were still single and not a husband or a father. While it is harmful to prescribe "appropriate" behavior, there are standards which we need to meet as we walk through life if we want to be healthy. If I am to successfully be relational at my job, my church, with my wife and with my children there has to be movement into and then out of world views.

So here I am. What do I desire more: health or familiarity? Or in my case what do I fear more: being unhealthy or having to change? The thing about staying the same is that you get left behind by friends, co-workers, family, spouse and eventually children. It is as unfair to them as it is to you. Put that way I can't give myself a choice, I refuse to let my family outgrow me and leave me behind. I want to be with them more than on a merely physical plane. So, here's to change, may God grant us courage.