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CHANGING THINGS TO KEEP THEM FROM CHANGING
Most mornings of my life are astoundingly similar.
Even though each day is new and filled with discovery, chocked full of wonder and challenge, grimace and grin…each day is remarkably like each previous day.
I skim my right hand down the wrought iron banister of homefront, left hand swinging bag and baggage of stuff to take to work. Upon the sidewalk or lawn or atop a bush is the morning paper, all snuggled up inside a clear sleeve, freshly pecked at by dew-dropped critters.
I pick up the package with now-freed right hand, stuff it under left arm, pull open the gate of our white picket fence. Only the gate does not want to open—I’m stating this as if the gate has free will and consciousness. Can gates decide whether to open?
On dry, rainless mornings, the gate swings free. Given an hour or two of precipitation, the wood expands just enough to make it stick. Grumbling and forcible exit follow.
Later in the day, at the shop, the tall wooden front door, itself a victim of humidity, groans and creaks quite loudly and hauntingly. This makes me grin and feel right at home. It causes customers to laugh or register alarm or give me free advice about how to fix creaking doors or preach to me about how I should get that thing fixed. Some customers even rush back to the door and force it closed in order to silence it.
I pretty much react the same each time, “You know, if that door ever stopped making that great sound, I would rig it to play a recording of the noise whenever opened. It has become part of the shop’s ambience.”
I make this statement just to test the customer’s flexibility of attitude. Usually, the effect is, the customer looks again at the creaking door, relaxes and laughs, gives up worrying about something beyond all personal control, and decides to embrace the shop and its idiosyncracies…thus returning to browsing and rumination.
The stubborn gate and protesting door serve to snap me out of my doldrums, force me to chuckle or snipe, jump-start me into the day’s activities, be they excruciatingly routine or off-balancing wondrous.
One of my favorite books is The Leopard. One of my favorite quotes from the book sticks with me and guides me to this day, making me appreciate sameness and change with equal zeal
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
–Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa