Last Sunday I heard a pastor tell a reporter the following:
“They say even the air conditioner had an impact on our community connections because people were no longer sitting on their porches and interacting with neighbors. So I worry about the unintended consequences of all this technology in religion.”
Let’s say he’s right, for the sake of argument (never mind that we might have been so hot and cranky that those porch sitting interactions could have been rather ugly).
Isn’t that a baby-with-the-bathwater position?
Why not accommodate technology with eyes wide open, eagerly ready to meet the new challenges it brings. You don’t stop progress for fear it will skip a beat. It WILL skip a beat, make no mistake. You bolster resiliency, rather, to be able to receive the multitude of good in spite of the minor frustrations. You plan for contingencies and, by all means, you plan that there will be the unplanned.
Health and behavior change are no exception.
We cling to sameness.
As a simple example, now that coffee is “back” I miss tea. Each morning I stand at the cupboard perplexed about my deep excitement over how much I love both and my anxiety over which to choose amplifies. It was so much easier when coffee was “out” and I could snub, “I don’t DO that.” Rumf, rumf, rumf. The world of warm drinks is now mine; behold abundance! And yet I whine, Wendy. Woe is me, right? Back off – we who are desperately habitual adjust painfully slow to change in our jam packed, working mom, kids off to school, commuter morning routine.
On a deeper level, when you change your exercise, eating, alcohol or smoking pattern, notice that your relationships change; not just to people but also to places and things. You’ll begin to see the world in new hues and it’s not always as pretty as before. After all, card night goes with pizza and beer for Pete’s sake. Not if you’re watching your calories and not if alcohol is a troublesome foe. A walk before dinner leaves little time for a TV-and-taco-night ritual. I have a friend, recovered from alcohol issues, who savors a mid-afternoon coffee break with a one cigarette ration, sequestered from those who tug at him throughout the day.
It doesn’t help that health educators keep the end goal a moving target. For years we’ve gotten kids to drink milk by adding chocolate to it, they were finally getting their much missing calcium and vitamin D. Along comes fabulous and famous BBC chef, Jamie Oliver, who recently filled a school bus with the sugar kids in LA county schools are now consuming in the form of chocolate milk. Despite a massive marketing effort, only roughly 20 people showed up to watch. Why? Because so many of us are too tired to face change, AGAIN! Change of a cause we once shepherded.
Tune in tomorrow for how we solve this wearisome change predicament!