Emily Articulated: Change

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

As I’m writing today, we are on the cusp of change (just as we are around every Election Day). Each voting cycle brings new ideas, misgivings, hopes and fears, inciting a new way of thinking and feeling about where we live and the systems that govern us. I’m writing before the results have been tallied and the up-for-grabs positions have been claimed; because, regardless of who collected the most votes or who we’ll be addressing as, “mayor” or “councilor,” we’ll all wake up to our own version of this change after it’s over.

This is the part in movies where a montage shows its subjects continuing with their routines. They still make coffee and wake their kids, get the mail, put out the trash and walk the dog — but the color of the scene and the tone of the music have near-imperceptibly shifted, either with a golden-hued light and hopeful melody or added contrast and the ominous creep of minor chords. Everything is the same, but the background is different.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

Change is funny like that, sometimes large and looming, with newness so big it stops us in our tracks, causing our way of life to crumble and reform around it. Other times, it’s as subtle as a key change in the background music of our everyday life — only perceptible when we pause long enough to name it. 

This impending change of leadership in our town has me thinking about all versions of change and the way that, big or small, it is inevitable (yes, I see you, Heraclitus, “The only constant in life is change”). Although eye-rollingly cheesy, this concept is ubiquitous for a reason. It resonates, on some level, with everybody.

Change is in the last day you let your mom hold your hand before climbing on the school bus despite never actually deciding to stop, and the clicking sound a combination lock makes when opening your first school locker. It’s in driving away with your car loaded to move, but lingering on the rearview because you know it — and you — will never look the same again. It’s in first loves and monumental heartbreaks, mortgages and home repair videos, in “I do’s” and “I promise,” and new little fingers wrapped around yours. It’s in, “It’s nice to meet you,” “It’s been too long,” “I don’t know when I’ll see you again” and, “I can’t believe this is goodbye” — and all the little and big moments in between.  

Change is what happens around us, too. It’s in new neighbors and the passing of seasons; in expanding pavement and updated plans for a city park. It’s in speckled fawns and ripening fruit, and in the leveling of trees to make way for another row of storage and housing units. 

Change is in every “under new management,” “now open” and “coming soon,” in the reclamation of old sledding hills, and in the updated names on the ledger of people in our community in positions of power and leadership. 

Change’s impact and our reception to it seems hinged on two factors: how different our lives feel because of it and the speed with which it happens. When changes occur that don’t significantly alter our day-to-day life, they’re easier to accommodate. When changes happen incrementally over time, we’re less likely to notice (less likely to care). But, when changes happen all of a sudden or all at once — when they affect how we go about our lives, or how we feel about ourselves and the space we occupy — they loom, creating high-impact craters in our worldview.

This can become an equation, a balancing act of normalcy and change, in which we have our hands on only one side of the scale. When high-impact change occurs inside or outside of our control, we can choose to lean more heavily into the things we know to be constant — the friends who always pick up when we call, the bar at which we can always find a familiar face or the hidden trail we’ll always find empty on a Tuesday morning. When change happens fast, we can decide to slow down and find unaltered pieces of our routine that remain, no matter how much of what we once still stands.

By the time this is printed, we’ll all have experienced a little change. We’ll feel a bit different about our town and the people in it. But whether it adds minor chords or a softly glowing light to the background of the rest of your life, I hope you find balance in all the things that remain — all the things that will be unequivocally the same.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.