The times they are a changin’

November 21, 2019

Five weeks ago I was uprooted from my home of 34 years. Last week my old friend Judy died and my current friend Karen had a heart attack. I’m starting to understand how the white nationalists feel.

When I was young I thought that change was exciting. New music, ethnic diversity, political upheaval, and romantic relationships appealed to my sense of adventure. Now…well, let’s just say that the status quo no longer feels like the enemy it once did. Serenity and stability are sexier than political or romantic drama.

Funny how age can change your perspective.

A couple of nights ago I watched The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a thoughtful if depressing movie about gentrification, race, and class. It reminded me of Blindspotting, another edgy and dark recent film about gentrification, race, and class but set in nearby Oakland. Both movies lamented the plight of local black men who grew up in San Francisco’s Fillmore District and West Oakland respectively, but who now have to navigate the economic and cultural changes brought about by shifting demographics as upscale white people move into their previously black neighborhoods.

These stories of social upheaval are as old as the human race. Here in California successive waves of migrants from Asia displaced one another over the centuries. These migrants, later known as American Indians or Native Americans, were in turn displaced by Spanish colonialists whose conquests were then usurped by Mexicans, who in turn gave way to American invaders.

I’ve been rather amused to hear of Latinos in San Francisco’s Mission District objecting to whites and Asians moving into that district. The Latinos insist that the Mission is their neighborhood, conveniently forgetting that it was originally an Irish neighborhood before Latinos moved in.

And now white nationalists are once again in the news as they commit acts of violence against non-white immigrants and others in the name of the survival of the white race. Interestingly, the black separatist group Nation of Islam was accused in 1965 by Malcolm X of being in cahoots with the white separatist groups the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

While I’m not sympathetic to identity politics on either the right or the left of the political spectrum, I do empathize with their resistance to change. Change can be scary, unsettling, threatening, destabilizing. Whether it’s losing a job, a home, a relationship, a sense of community, or the biggest transformation of all – death – change is not something that most of us welcome. Of course, we are happy to embrace change if it is something that we consider to be positive – new love, more money, better health. But change usually involves uncertainty, and the older I get, the less I like surprises.

So I don’t want my friends to die, I don’t want to move out of my home again, and I want to be able to continue to hike and travel and do as I please. Memo to God: don’t rock my boat!

On the other hand, resistance to change creates suffering, and suffering isn’t fun. There’s something to be said for going with the flow, and allowing or trusting the Force to unfold in ways that are ultimately beneficial even if that unfoldment is uncomfortable for our egos in the short term.

So I boldly say to my soul: bring on the changes!

Just not right now.