change – Page 4 – Panta Rhei Enterprise

Perception of change

On the complexity of change

Hey, Friend,

Change the lane. Change your life. Work for change. Change is the only constant.

In your head, have you been adding more lines with the word change? Did you hear them? They are used so often and sound like clichés, phrases hollowed out by frequent use. Everything changes; we change everything. I believe that little and large change events are more frequent than the tiny events of talking about change. Maybe that’s why I am writing the blog on the complexity of change?

This imbalance between how very often change happens, is initiated, affects our life at different levels and how less often we talk about change, reflect on it, are mindful of it looks like a problem of perception to me, among other equally important perspectives. So, what are we looking at? Change. The activist and author adrienne maree brown sees two types of change: shocks and slides. She says we should deal with shocks differently than with slides. I believe we perceive them differently, too. Of course, change happens at different levels and strata. Changes in the body, in each of our personal lives, in our close circle, in our community, in society, in this world, and in the universe. As I am writing this in March 2022, rockets with celebreties are shot into near space and some folk book their dwelling lot on Mars, the war in Ukraine has been added to the many atrocities in this world before the pandemic subsided, people of different camps and echo chambers in the US are divided over yesterday’s battles and uncooperation is one factor that drives up prices, traffic density is clogging the streets of San Diego again and people either fear masks or masklessness, relationships in the family are redefined, there is a backlog of work for me not only from COVID, and my hair is getting grayer and thinner and grows more slowly. Do we – do I – perceive change as negative? Not really. We have a negativity bias; we remember negative events, change that we perceive as negative, more and better. Psychologists tell me it is an evolutionary feature we have. It used to help us survive. When we perceive the shocks and slides we perceive them as positive or negative. I often judge – immediately when perceiving. When I take the time to reflect on my perception on a change of a smaller or larger scale, I realize the change itself is neither positive nor negative in and of itself. For me. Buddhists say it is empty. Change – as anything else and both the shocks and slides – is just a container that our mind fills with our individual positive or negative meaning instantaneously when we perceive it. Change does not have such meaning in and of itself. Does this sound strange? It did to me for a long time and it still happens at times. Why? Perceiving of change and filling it with positivity or negativity is such a quick succession, it feels like the change has had that meaning from the very time we noticed it. But it did not. We perceive change first and then our mind imbues it, fills it with meaning. One happens very soon after the other, but there is a short break, a little crack in time. We can use that crack to let the light in, reflect. If you need more time, you can widen the crack by postponing giving any meaning to the change you perceived. And that brings us back to shocks and slides and to how they are perceived differently.

In the next post …

The homepage

I have updated Panta Rhei‘s homepage … and thought let me send it out also.

Welcome

Thank you for coming by. Is it the blog that got you interested? Where you googling Panta Rhei? Are you thinking a lot about complexity and change? Have a look ’round and feel free to get in touch.

Chris and I started this site and blog in late 2019. We both like writing, and talking, about the complexities and simplicities of life, about working in groups and leadership, and about learning and teaching both in the chaotic and the virtual worlds. We both have years of experience in language and communication, education and training, management and leadership. We wanted to share our ideas, our expertise, and our insight with a wider audience. Worth a try, we thought. A lot has happened since then. Both of us are working full time. Chris started dedicating his time to narrating audio books. I have put more emphasis on my writing per se. Learning new things, joining writing groups and courses, …

What is happening here?

Years of learning, reading, listening, experiencing, doing, reflecting, leading, following, smiling, crying, talking, writing, … Then it was time to share, time for this site, time for this blog:

On the complexity of change

Most of nature is complex. Most of society is complex. Human behavior is complex. And, as the cliché has it, the only constant is change. And this change is not linear. Sometimes it seems we soar ahead, sometimes it feels like we walk ’round in circles, and sometimes we are taken for a ride. On a rollercoaster. It is this complexity of change that I am exploring, that I am relfecting on. One blog post at the time. Thinking about it, learning about Chaos Theory, Complexity Science, Dynamic Systems Theory, I have now done for 15 years.

Under this topic, I blog about timely concepts, practices, and reflections, which I believe to be relevant to trainers, teachers, coaches, mentors, and, of course, learners.

RoLL: Research on learning and language

Look around a bit more. Or why not join the growing group of people who follow the Panta Rhei Blog? [In case you are wondering, the relevant button is in the top-right corner of each page or underneath the text and comment box, if you are reading this on your phone.]

The posts Chris wrote on the BASE model are also still available.

Get in Touch

If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, comment right on the page or post or send a quick email to matschulze7980@gmail.com. I live and work in Southern California. If you happen to be in the area and would like to meet, again an email is good.

Find the contact details and social media handles on a separate page.

Panta Rhei – everything flows and changes, and so does this site. Come back again. Wishing you a wonderful day.

Connected forest lake in Algonquin Park — Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada

It’s time — now

Hey, Friend,

Time, doesn’t it fly … I have not been wasting any time. I had no time. There simply never was a time when I could sit down and write. Perhaps, it wasn’t the right time. A time to gather stones? A time to cast them them out?

Time!
Chris, I am always reading your comments immediately. In a timely manner, so to speak. And then I think, I should pick up on this, I should pick up on that. And then time goes by … In both my brief exploration of the word herd immunity and your comment to that post, we talked about our schedules. Yes, schedule, time management, the passing of time, the future, … have been on my mind for some time.

Time: Just now, I have learned that the word schedule is related to the German noun Zettel and the Spanish cédula, simply meaning a sheet of paper, a note sheet. How do I know, you ask. Well, I looked it up at https://www.etymonline.com/word/schedule. I learned that schedule only came to mean a sheet with a timetable in the nineteenth century. Does this mean only with the beginning industrialization schedules became more important? Are they important to you? How important is it to be on time? Is it important to you to do something in time?

Time? What is that anyway—time? Is it ambiguous?
We measure. Each hour has 60 minutes. Exactly. Each day—only 24 hours.
We plan: I will work on this blog post today. We will finish the project next week. School begins next month.
We experience: This took forever. That went by so quickly.
We remember: Has it really been five months that we have not been “at work”? That we sat in our offices, with door knocks and phone rings punctuating the day? That a mostly electronic leash propelled us from one place to the next, spending – too much? – time with different people? Waiting for a meeting to end, so that we could go somewhere and do something else?
We dream: What will happen in November? How will it be next year? When will the time come?

Time is all these. It crawls. It stands still. It passes. Time is nonlinear. What does that that even mean? I am not sure we know, even after millennia have gone by. We do know what time is not.

Time is not homogeneous. In good times and in bad. Everything changes all the time.

Time does not live in a clock nor in a calendar. Like light does not live in the kitchen fridge. The time comes and the time has gone.

Time is not periodical. There is no sinus curve, no going in circles. Not even around the clock.

Time does not have a schedule. It does not have an agenda. Time does not have to be anywhere. So, time can never be on time.

Time changes and is the same all the time.

Chris, I am sure you remember my writing on the Complexity of Change. Timely to pick it up, I thought. Don’t complex systems change over time? We often feel the times are changing. It looks like it, when watch the hands of a clock, hear the bells ringing, or turn a calendar leaf. But, hey!? The clock, the bell tones, and the calendar are changing. The time is not. The time is always now. It was now yesterday. It will be now tomorrow. What changes between yesterday and tomorrow, I believe, we can influence a little — now.

That’s all we do with a schedule: we write a little note on a, perhaps virtual, sheet for when the time comes to know a little better what to do — now. Time management sounds like one is managing time. You know, I have tried … and failed … miserably. So, I think I better do something – in my time, with my time. Now.

Time is up.