Change

There aren't many things in life you can count on to remain the same forever.  There's a comfort to be found in everything staying the same.  There are proponents of change, myself included, who look to the future and look at how things can be made better.  I know that at times it can seem like I focus on the negatives but the reason that's the case is because I see the negatives as the problems of the world that need to be addressed and solved.  I don't see the positives as something that need to be changed, so I leave them be.

The thing about change though is that it often makes people uneasy because what they get is the unknown and if they didn't seek it out then they can fear it and reject it.  This is an argument that is used by people on both sides.  Those that oppose the change fight for the right to choose for themselves, and those that advocate the change fight for it because they are usually the ones that made the change, and their argument is usually that those who oppose it would never have chosen at all, they would have liked things to stay the same as they always were.  Life isn't like that though.  Life is a never-ending permutation of a simple algorithm:

start:
    state = currentState
    newState = change(currentState)
    success = test(newState)
    if success:
        state = newState
goto start

Some of you will recognise this algorithm, even if you have no background in programming whatsoever you may be able to guess what is happening.  This is the algorith for evolution.  That's all there is to it.  Changes are made ad infinitum.  Each change when made is tested.  That test is simply survival.  That test has no bias of political, national, or even notional responses.  The only criteria is that the process continues, that survival is maintained.  You can see how this process can result in outcomes that may not be beneficial, less than ideal or even destructive changes can occur, so long as the process itself is uninterrupted those changes persist.  In some cases it can be many cycles before the full impact of those past changes have their full effect.

Throughout life things change, if you constantly focus on your past iterations and try to recreate them then you deny the process of evolution.  You actively try to impede it.  If you feel like you live in an uncertain world, then it's time to stop looking back at the past and look to the future.  Change is being cradled, the process is in effect, a new state will soon be created and if you don't help to create that state then you give up what little control you ever held.  If you want to preserve what you hold dear then the only way to do it is to embrace change and integrate your beliefs and your experience into the change that is happening.  If you oppose synergy you will be cut off and consign yourself to the past iterations of the process and be left behind.

When the Internet rose to prominence and the world began to embrace it, those businesses that opposed it were quickly forgotten.  The birth of the World Wide Web could have heralded the end of many traditional establishments.  The very existence of mainstream media and news outlets and the press were challenged.  Some embraced the change, and "went digital" as they termed it back then.  Those that did, exist to this day, and not only do they still remain heavyweights in their industry, but their scope and their audiences multiplied - and in many cases so did their revenue.  There are many people who argue that the internet is not profitable to "old media" but I would argue those that struggle to make a profit online are those who approach the online world with an offline mentality.  The online world is different, it represents the outcome of the evolutionary process, and the offline world represents the input.  Those who have not changed their way of thinking are failing.

What this means for you and me, is simply that you must remember you past but you must accept that it is not your future.  That may seem obvious to some but to others the idea that you can return to the past persists.  Many people want to recreate a world that in truth never existed to begin with because what you remember is your perception of the world not the reality.  When you were 5 years old and believed in Santa that belief was ultimately something that relied on your perception of the world.  The person you are now is more knowledgeable than you were, and you know it's not possible to be 5 years old again and it's not possible to see the world through the eyes of a 5 year old again, but that doesn't stop people from trying.

Remember your past but be mindful of your future.  Do not get lost reading the past and forget to write the future, or you'll wake up one day and realise half the book of your life is blank pages you can never write on because those are the days you stopped writing.