Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 57 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

The Only Constant in Life is Change

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 57 of our Trek, and as we consume the daily nuggets of wisdom, we need to realize that as a wise person that everything in life is changing. We need to be able to accept and manage change proactively and not try to stop life from changing, for that is impossible. Instead, let us embrace and then guide the changes in our lives so that it will allow us to leave a living legacy each day.  Today we will look at why change is the only real constant in our lives.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Today Paula and I drove about an hour north to Cambridge, Ohio, to go to church and have dinner with my dad. We try to get up to see him at least every other month. It is a blessing to share the time worshipping with and visiting Dad.  He continues to provide good and godly council to our lives.  We are always grateful that we have a strong heritage in our family, which we can trace back many generations. I realize that not everyone has had these blessings.

So let’s move on up the trail as we venture out today. As we trek through each day, we need to understand that we will never be in this exact same situation with these conditions. We need to make the most of every moment and never lose this opportunity.

As the Quaker Missionary Etienne de Grellet put it, "I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." These are certainly some powerful thoughts to ponder as we start today.

“Change is the only constant in life” is a quote that is attributed to pre-Socractic Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus around 500bc. The same philosopher illustrated the point about change being ever present by saying “No man ever steps into the same river twice.” An ever flowing river is there and even has a name, yet the water in it keeps changing so that from one second to the next it is really a different river.

As I reflect on the times we are able to spend with my dad, I see that throughout my parents' lives, although they would have liked things to stay the same, they embraced the changes in life. It just brought to my mind how my mom wanted to drive positive change in local public education, so she ran for and was elected to the school board for several terms. Another example was when Mom was in her late fifties, and she trained and became an EMT for the local rescue squad after she felt helpless when an elderly friend died when she was with him. Dad was always learning and changing in his work away from the farm, and he was constantly looking for ways to grow apples better, while maintaining the conviction to grow them organically.

I believe observing their lives was an example to welcome and even embrace change. As I consider why it is relatively easy for me to accept change, I ask myself why people are so afraid and so resistant to inevitable changes in their lives.

We expect night to change to day, seasons to change, and children to grow taller. We expect to grow older, to watch children marry, to retire from our jobs, and to play with our grandchildren.

We all face changes every day whether it is a simple change of the weather, our schedule, or what we choose to eat that day. We each deal with change in a different way, and change affects us each differently as well. For the most part, we are generally left to deal with the daily ebb and flow of life and are contented with the small changes we see a...