This epigram by the French novelist, Jean-Baptiste Karr is one many of us have likely quoted at one time or another. Roughly it translates as: the more things change, the more they stay the same. It is curious, however, that many of us feel that change does not leave us anchored in the familiar, but rather drags us kicking and screaming into an uncertain future. It is a bit of a paradox, this change business. Sometimes we welcome change—feeling our lives stuck in an interminable routine, yet other times we have settled into a comfortable existence only to find ourselves uprooted by an unwelcome wind that threatens to blow us far off our course. So, which is it, is change something we should embrace or fear?

Since I have embarked on this analogy of fair or ill winds kindly allow me to test your patience with just a bit more. Another aphorism you may have heard says that things are at their calmest just before the storm. That is often true as it applies to weather and to a degree, life as well. Just when we think things are going smoothly, change comes along bringing with it whatever fortunes it may foreshadow. Have you felt this?

I know in my life I have often had the premonition of change and reacted with a sense of foreboding—as if I was peering into a dark storm-front about to descend on me, with no sense of what my world might be like when the storm passes. Yet at other times the anticipation of a long-sought change that I hoped would improve my life had me feeling buoyant and optimistic.

I have written before that we humans are very poor judges of events that affect us. We view things through a prism of good and bad subjectively assigning a benign or malign value to impending changes. The outcomes often do not match our forecasts. At least they have not for me. Some of the things I dreaded most, in the end brought about unanticipated blessings, and likewise many of my cherished hopes went unrealized. The only constant in all this was me.

It seems obvious in retrospect that I chose to view what occurred in my life as good or bad based on prior experiences, or judgements, neither of which were anchored in anything over which I had any control or, frankly, any understanding. So, my subjective response to these events, whether viewed as blessings or curses, dictated how I experienced change.

I would like to say that I am in a different place today but that would not be entirely true. I am still given to reacting in the immediacy of the moment in an emotional context. I go there instinctively, though I know better. It takes me a day or several before I am able to right the ship and remember that my limited understanding does not make for a reliable forecast. What saves me from dwelling on my emotional response are two truths. The first, is the ever-present reminder of all the blessings I have enjoyed and the providential power at work in the universe that works to bring things to an end I could have never foreseen. The second, arises from a similar place—a fundamental trust that my power to affect the outcome of any change is limited but that a force far greater than my own is steering me to an intended destination. Since I cannot change that outcome much less understand where it will take me, the only action required of me is none. Yes, you heard me correctly, my job is not to try to navigate these uncertain waters, but to trust that higher being—the one that dwells within us all—to do what I cannot.

For me, the truth behind Karr’s observation is clear. Whether I regard change as friend or foe, it will come. Where it will leave me is nothing over which I have any power whatsoever, except how I react. If I see it as a threat and take matters into my own hands, believing I can forestall what I regard as an unwelcome outcome, I will have a negative experience for certain—and what is more I will never know where that change might have brought me. In the same way, when I try to force my way to what I believe is a welcome destination, too often it turns out to be disappointing or hollow. But when I accept, choose to allow the coming change to take me where it will, the destination is affirming. I am left standing—the essential being unchanged, a pilgrim on a whole new shore ready to be explored.

Tomorrow is Easter. A time of the year signifying re-birth in many religions, going back to humanity’s beginnings. However you celebrate this day I hope you can see it as a time of opportunity and renewal from which you will emerge unchanged, but changed forever. As for me, I am grateful that because of the actions of the most extraordinary being to have ever walked this earth, I awaken each day reborn, in relationship with the power that dwells within me that will always be the same, whatever change may come.