The Brochure on There Always Being Leaves, and Change

They go kicking and screaming and complain about it the whole way. To me, that's annoying. Just kill me if I ever get that way. Please. 

Today I’m going to talk about changes.  At first I thought I would talk about leaves.  Well, I think I WILL talk about leaves, because after all, there’s always leaves. Just like there’s always weeds.  If you’re a gardener, you know that.  But first, let’s continue on with reading another review on Apple podcasts.  This one is from my brother-in-law, and he wrote it after the episode that I did about my mother in law Ellie.  “Well, just finish this podcast episode. And I must say it left me with such a warm and happy feeling about Mom and how she was and how you guys developed a wonderful gravitational pull with each other.  Ellie was pretty much unconditional love with all her kids, including you. Mom was lucky to have a daughter-in-law who helped her heal as well.”

That was one of my earliest reviews and I'm grateful. And you may say that there's a little relationship bias here since he's a member of my family, but I'm appreciative for the positive review. So thank you to Sheldon. And, If you don't know, you can go on Apple podcasts, some of the other platforms as well and, write a review.

So back to today's episode. 

Recently here it’s been really cold, but I guess in most parts of the country it’s been cold.  We had some rain and then a lot of wind.  And that meant leaves.  On one side of us we have the neighbor’s sycamore tree.  Big, tall, stately and filled with leaves. Big leaves the size of dinner plates. Now I’m not complaining.  Sycamore leaves feel familiar to me.  After all this tree was here when I was growing up.  It’s a lot older than me.  I mean, a LOT older than me.  There was also a sycamore tree next door to my mom’s parent’s house.  An old one.  And then my dad’s parents?  They had a big old sycamore tree in their yard too.  So I feel like I was born with a sycamore leaf in my crib!  Not my diaper, just my crib!  

The antithesis of this is the neighbor in back of us.  Two huge oak trees and small, sharp leaves.  I know they’re sharp because whenever I’m trying to pull a weed that has one of them entangled in it, the oak leaf will make me yell out OUCH!  I feel bad for our little dog who has to walk on them so I’m always trying to rake them up at least to make a pathway for her to do her business.  I look up at the branches and wonder how could that many brown oak leaves have really come off?  How could we have gotten that many acorns?  Unlike the sycamore that is going to be bare of any leaves, the oak trees will remain green.  Somehow it must hide the leaves inside the branches and when some fall off, POOF!  Others pop out in their place.  It’s evergreen.  It’s the definition of the word evergreen.  

Sometimes like this last week when I look out at the yard and see so many leaves, especially sycamore leaves, in one area, it looks like the inside of a kids’ bounce house, I visualize myself blowing the leaves back onto the neighbor’s yard.  Let their leaves be their problem.  Then I realize there are those times when our redwood tree has dropped branches and needles and those little miniature pine cones and thus little seeds all over neighboring yards and as much as their leaves get on our yard, our leaves get on theirs. So live and let live.  

I thought I would find a podcast or two on gardening.  I could learn something.  I could plan my garden better.  Well, I did find one.  Good episode topics.  Is gardening boring I ask you?  I don’t think so.  But this podcast, I find it mind numbingly boring.  I won’t name it, but I find it amazing that two people could ramble on about tomato seeds for that long, or talk about the pros and cons of composting.  For like an hour or more?  I need to keep looking for a show that is more energized.  Anyway, it’s a good thing to put on when I need to fall asleep.  Maybe somewhere there’s an episode just about leaves.  I talk about leaves in specifics, but I also mean them in general because the leaves that keep showing up, just like the weeds, are sort of an analogy for life.  There's always weeds. There's always leaves.

Anyway, I digress. Back to change.  Because there’s always change, right?  The week after January 1st, I was kind of overwhelmed and a little dizzy by the number of transitions that I saw going on around me.  Not transitions like people dying.  I mean, I guess there’s that too.  But just changes.  Changes in businesses, changes for people around me, change, change, change.  I don’t want to be specific because I want to maintain privacy for everyone, but a lot of change.  It was kind of mind numbing to me.  

Now, I embrace change.  Really, is there any other choice?  Things in this life are always changing.  Mostly it’s for the best.  Things change as things evolve in this world.  Sometimes it’s hard though.  Hard to see things change that we’ve gotten used to.  I know, it’s scary because you don’t really know if things are going to change for the better, or if things will be worse after the change.  I think it’s natural that we fear change, but I have found in those instances when change was imminent and I was fearful, things turned out okay.  Mostly.  Okay, not always. I think the key to part of successful change is that you have to change too.  If change is going on around you?  Sometimes you have to change your approach to it, whether that means a different mindset or maybe just moving on with your life.  

We all know those people who absolutely approach change with their heels dug deep into the ground.  They go kicking and screaming and complain about it the whole way.  To me, that’s annoying.  Just kill me if I ever get that way.  Please.  Just move on.  The ebb and flow of life moves along. Sometimes we have control of things, and sometimes we really don’t.  Like they say, when one door closes, another door opens.  Whoever “they” are.  And sometimes I feel that when change is happening, how you thought it would turn out isn't the way it turns out at all. You just have to be open to the process.

I get it, partly.  As I’ve gotten older a lot of the things that have been around, the institutions if you will, are disappearing.  Like my favorite restaurants.  Now that’s one change I don’t like.  But I get that financially it’s been hard for businesses to survive.  And a restaurant is built by people.  Maybe the person who built the restaurant isn’t interested in continuing.  Maybe they want change.  But in the process new places to eat come on board.  There are always other places to eat, right?  So it’s a matter of exploring new things.  Sometimes you find good things to eat, better things to eat.  Sometimes you’re just disappointed.  It’s a process.  

One big change that I see is disappearing retail establishments.  Remember the days when you’d go out to buy things and shop?  Literally shop for something?  Search for something you needed or wanted?  Now a big part of our lives are online.  So storefront retail is getting harder and harder to find.  And I totally understand.  I’ve compared prices for items I use all the time from over the counter medicine to supplies for my dog, cat and horse.  It’s cheaper to buy things online.  But buying in person supports jobs and the small business community.  It costs a lot to run a small business, a retail store.  I know that from experience on that!  But it’s no wonder with the lower online prices why people shop that way.  Who wants to pay more? I remember being in a local CVS and I was telling the cashier that I could get one of their items online for cheaper than they were selling it, and he told me, “but we need the numbers.”  You don’t imagine that large corporate businesses like CVS would have trouble meeting their sales goals, but recently Rite Aid closed several of their stores locally, eliminating jobs at the same time.  So it’s a thing.  

How do you approach change?  How do you deal with it?  How do you feel about it?  

Now in closing, we just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. day here yesterday, and I want to share a quote from the man himself.  My friend Alex posted it on her Facebook page, and I thought it was worth sharing.

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”  

I hope however you are spending your January, you are embracing love.  Well that’s all I’ve got for today.  Now I have to go out and believe it or not, rake some more leaves.  Trash day is coming up.  Next week we’ll tackle another topic together.  I hope you’ll join me.