April 10: Big Glass Cases, Change, the Future

I'm going to use a passage from The Catcher in the Rye I've used before:

...Certain things they should stay the way they are.  You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.  I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway.  Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked.

I love this passage because it captures one of my greatest fears/worries:  change.  Basically, Holden has as much a problem with change as I do.  The only constant in his life has been change.  He's seen his younger brother die.  His older brother moved to California.  He's been expelled from at least three schools that I can recall.  He's tired of change.  That's why he likes museums so much.  Everything is in big glass cases, and nothing changes.

Most people know I'm not a fan of change.  In fact, I would rank change right up there with root canal and colonoscopy.  It's a matter of comfort.  If life is calm and happy, why rock the boat by doing something stupid like taking up sky diving or switching jobs?  I could refine my position on change a little bit:  I welcome change if I am its catalyst.  If I sell my house and get a bigger house, I'd be fine because it's my choice.  If I'm offered a full-time position at the university, I'd say, "Where do I sign?"  These are things I've want.  Things I've actively pursued.

This morning, I went for a walk with a friend of mine who is a nurse.  We started talking about the recent take-over of our hospital by a large healthcare system.  The outpatient surgery center where we work is now owned by a national corporation.  And that national corporation is making big changes.  It's going to take our little family of coworkers and transform it into a huge outpatient surgical facility.  In a couple of years, we're not even going recognize each other, let alone where we work.  Big changes.

As we were walking, I could feel my stomach tensing into a hornet's nest.  Even the thought of change has a physical reaction in my body.  By the end, I had a headache and a serious case of diarrhea.

I know that, like shit, change happens.  There's no way to avoid it.  The future is one big black question mark, and it gives me hives.  Of course, my hope is to have a full-time teaching position at the university before construction is complete on the new surgery center.  That's my hope.

Saint Marty keeps that hope in a big glass case in his Museum of Things to Come, right next to his Pulitzer Prize for poetry and Nobel Prize for Literature.

I would not pay to get into this place