Everybody Knows Something Until What They Know Changes
Parsing this is a conscious effort you alone can undertake.
I call myself a modern-day philosopher. The focal point of my personal philosophy is what I call Pathwalking. Pathwalking is the notion that, via mindfulness – active conscious awareness – you can choose how you shape your life experience and what paths you take therein.
I’ve been writing about this every week for over 14 years now, and aspects of it have changed because I’ve changed. Change, after all, is the one and only constant in the universe. Change is inevitable, and in-and-of-itself, neutral.
For example, Newtonian physics was how science described the universe for a couple of centuries. That changed and was superseded when Einstein presented his Theory of General Relativity. This has nothing to do with good or bad, right or wrong, or the like. It’s just how perspective and understanding can, do, and will evolve.
Change, unfortunately, scares people. In fact, it scares them so much that they will hold onto lousy circumstances, reject logic and reason for opinions that agree with what they believe, and support people who blatantly lie to them and do them harm while promising that they alone can and will maintain the homeostasis they crave.
It doesn’t help that many of those in power want people to stay scared and confused to maintain their fleeting power. As part of that, they like us to be afraid of change as a means to steer us where they want us to be.
How do you combat that? By recognizing and understanding the constancy of change, and that nearly nothing is set in stone.
For example, some people and things that were once good change and become not so good.
Once good, now not
Many of the things that change are way, way outside of our control. For example, people I don’t know but admired have done something that ended my admiration for them.
I’ve never been one for heroes. I know lots of people who celebrate their parents, an aunt or uncle, someone out there who they consider a hero. I’ve never had that. Maybe I’m just jaded. Maybe I’ve always seen that people are flawed and never held anyone up as especially heroic. It’s hard to quantify this, but that’s just my experience.
There have been, however, people I don’t know personally that I have admired. People who did something that made an impression on me, shared an idea I respected, or created something that impacted me. But then, some of these people have done things to lose my admiration.
Why and how? Because they proved to be not just flawed human beings, but not good people. JK Rowling and her transphobia, Orson Scott Card and his homophobia, Deepak Chopra and his association with Epstein all come to mind. My admiration didn’t fade because of differences of opinion. Rowling and Card actively engage in things that harm people, and Chopra’s association with that monster is just awful.
Still, Harry Potter got kids reading that might not have otherwise. Ender’s Game is one of the finest sci-fi stories and character studies I’ve ever read. Chopra’s writing has inspired and opened many eyes. But you can only partially separate the people from their work. Things have changed.
Everybody knows something until what they know changes. Sometimes that’s scary, sometimes unpleasant. Other times, it just makes you sad.
Knowing something and knowing nothing
When I started writing this philosophy, I was single, working a decent but unfulfilling job, and beginning to apply active mindfulness to consciously create my reality. As I began to explore Pathwalking and develop how it can be done, I worked to practice what I “preached”. I worked to be more mindful, make more conscious choices and decisions, and walk my talk.
Initially, I said that what you can and do control in your life are your thoughts, feelings, and actions. In time, I added to that your intentions and the positivity or negativity of your approach. What changed? I learned more. Reading, writing, and experiencing life taught me things, and I changed some parts of my philosophy.
Pathwalking isn’t set in stone. I’ve changed some of my paths along the way and made both good and bad choices. I know something about a lot of different topics. For the sci-fi I write, I’ve studied aspects of quantum mechanics, physics, and biology to keep plausibility. But while I know something about these topics, for the most part, I know nothing.
I’m not good at math. Anything beyond the basics of algebra and geometry makes my head hurt. Something I know is that when it comes to math, overall, I know almost nothing.
I embrace that I know something, but also know nothing. I’m not afraid to admit there’s a lot I don’t know. Why? Because change means even what I know might shift along the way.
Everybody knows something until what they know changes
Fear of change is not well addressed in this world. Hell, it’s frequently weaponized to sway, influence, and attempt to drive people. MAGA is entirely built on this.
You can’t make the masses handle change. All you can do is make choices and decisions for yourself to address change. However, to handle change, the first thing is to recognize its inevitability.
Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. And I’ll prove it to you. Let’s say you’re 25 years old. Your body, now, has changed from how it was when you were 5. Guess what? Your body, now, will change when you’re 50. You can do nothing about this, save self-care to influence some of that change (diet, exercise, mental health, and so on).
First, recognize that change is inevitable. It happens.
Second, acknowledge this. When you recognize the inevitability of change, but don’t acknowledge it, more often than not, change will upset, surprise, and potentially distress you. It’s like seeing a car driving beside you, forgetting it’s there, then almost hitting it when changing lanes because you didn’t acknowledge it.
Once you recognize and acknowledge the inevitability of change, you make it easier to roll with it, work with it, or take actions to take what control of it you can. Just remember that the only person you can control change for is you, and that’s almost exclusively from within.
Fear and change
Lastly, recognize and acknowledge that fear of change is a choice. When you do, working with it becomes easier because you can choose not to let fear of change overwhelm you. I just wrote about choice and fear here.
Something you know can and will change. And you get to choose your comprehension of that and what you do with it.
What’s your relationship with what you know, don’t know, and how you handle the inevitability of change?
This is the seventh-hundred-forty-fourth (744) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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