Nothing is Constant but Change...

I know that's true, but for the girl in me who doesn't handle change well it makes life challenging.


Obviously, the last year of my life has brought major changes.  But, if I step back and look at my 40 years in their entirety, I realize there's never been a time without massive amounts of change.  


Sometimes the changes were relatively small, like different neighbors, new paint on the walls or a road block that made me take a different route to work.  But, if I go year by year, I don't think I could find a year without one of those 'major life changes' you see on the lists they put out to remind us of what causes the 'most stress'.  


When I feel like things are getting too crazy, I have a 'coping strategy' (I guess you could call it) of stepping back and looking at the 'bigger picture'.  For example, when I had to leave my job in MI because of the divorce and move across the country, it was really hard (I HATE moving!).  So every day I would read a newspaper (something I generally avoid like the plague) or talk to friends to hear about others who didn't have the option to move someplace closer to family, warmer and in a better economic state.  These 'reality checks' always make me say to myself, "See, quit your whining.  What you're viewing as catastrophe is really some disappointment with a lot of blessings!"


Lately, I've been wondering why I've never found peace in the changes of life.  Why, even when positive, does change still lead to that uneasy feeling something's wrong, that the floor's about to drop out or that, maybe, it's a short-term positive change with long-term negative ramifications?


So, last night I was surfing the web looking for information on life changes and finding peace with them and found this video of the Dalai Lama. (Be warned!  The video quality is horrible.  Obviously, someone taping with a handheld camera while trying to watch his Holiness.)  But, ignoring the quality of the video, the quality of the information is pretty good.


What really caught my attention was his statement that obvious change (big change) doesn't happen without momentary changes (changes happening EVERY second, including those at the atomic level).  


If, then, what I perceive as "constant" and "unchanging" is truly nothing more than random atomic chaos can't I begin to view the chaos as the constant and see the beauty of it all?


Hmmmm....