Change or Not Change?

Odd Company -- April 7, 2025

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —

Welcome to this issue of Odd Company, which I hope will offer a little respite. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling like a leaf in a whirlwind for the past little while. Every morning, the news is filled with a fresh parade of events, each one more unexpected than the last. Buddhism teaches us that uncertainty is the natural state of our constantly transforming world. We can’t keep things from changing. If we try, we suffer, and we add to the suffering of others.

I say this advisedly, having spent a couple of hours on Saturday standing outside the local Tesla dealership with my Raging Granny friends, singing, whistling, and playing my lovely old tambourine. It is so bright with good memories it’s almost weightless. It’s beautifully made, with a double row of double clappers. It has no drum head. It’s meant to jingle, and jingling is what it does best. There was quite a crowd of us lining both sides of El Camino Real and packed into the center divider. One protestor carried a big American flag; another was wearing a Statue of Liberty costume! Most of those who passed in their cars honked in support, and we whooped and whistled in return. Heaven help the poor Tesla owners driving in to drop their cars off for service. We were polite, but it must have been an intimidating prospect. (I’m the small one in the middle, with the white-rimmed glasses and the red apron.)

Raging Grannies at the Palo Alto Tesla dealership on April 4. Photo by Santi B.

A great many in the crowd carried homemade signs. At home afterward, as I took off my granny apron, my sun hat, and my shoes and plopped into the nearest chair with a footstool, I thought about those signs. They said all kinds of different things. “Hands Off Medicare,” “Resist!” “Stop Elon,” “Save Our Democracy,” “Nobody Voted for This Mess.” If they had a common theme, it was anger. And, to be honest, it was anger about changes we wish weren’t happening. Buddhism obliged me to ask myself, would our protest just add to the suffering?

Buddhism, of course, is notoriously nuanced. So is Christianity if it’s thoughtfully practiced. Neither asks us to simply lie down and accept harmful events we might have some control over. But people don’t always agree on what’s harmful and what’s not. Sure, there are obvious cases at both ends of the spectrum. In between, though, there’s a lot of room for argument. So both belief systems ask us to be humble and open-minded when deciding whether to take action, and what sort of action to take. Ultimately, each of us decides for ourself. One thing we can be sure of is that these decisions have consequences, and we must be ready to bear them, whatever they may be.

Learning to tell the difference between right and wrong is the work of a lifetime. When we are small children, we watch to see who gets into trouble, and for what. Our first moral decisions are all about avoiding punishment. The “right” thing is whatever those in charge want. We stay out of trouble by being obedient. As we get a little older, we add self-interest to the mix. Avoiding punishment is no longer enough by itself. We begin to ask, “If I do what you want, what will you give me in return?” Hey, Dad, an allowance, perhaps? By the time we reach adolescence, most of us have started doing some things and refraining from others because we want to win friends or impress people. This is the stage at which you come home with a broken arm after jumping out of a tree, your excuse being that everybody else was doing it, and your mom grabs you by the ear and asks whether you’d jump off a bridge just because Billy did it.

As our lives progress, most of us stop defining “right” as whatever impresses bystanders or personally benefits us. Adults generally believe we should respect the rights and opinions of others. We also believe in laws and regulations as a common agreement about what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not. Good laws create the most good for the most people. Everyone benefits from obeying them.

If we are thoughtful and lucky, we ultimately end up with a set of sound personal beliefs based on ethical principles such as respect, honesty, and justice. There are many universally accepted moral and ethical frameworks to help us decide which actions are right and which are wrong. But here’s a pretty simple rule of thumb. Things are going to change whether we want them to or not. Our job as moral beings is to respond to those changes with as much compassion and courage as possible.

I have just had the good fortune of discovering the Midwestern singer, songwriter, writer, and poet Carrie Newcomer. No clue how it could possibly have taken me this long. I can’t imagine a more perfect piece of music for tonight than her song, “If Not Now,” which first appeared on her 2010 album, “Before and After.” Find the lyrics here. Among other things, Newcomer collaborates on the podcast The Growing Edge with fellow Quaker, J. Parker Palmer.

And now, off to bed, happy to be thinking about the good progress my tomato seedlings are making, and the pleasing hum of bees all over our yard. The Japanese maples are blooming, and oh how the bees love them! Soon it will be time to plant. Life is good!