Changing the Rules

We spend our whole lives learning how to live on this planet.  We learn the mental, the physical, and the spiritual skills we need to successfully move through life.   We expect that once we learn a new skill, we won’t forget; we’ll never need to learn again.  We’ll never lose the skills we have.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but then you shouldn’t have to.

But things change.  Without time and practice we lose some of the skills we spent so much effort gaining and refining.  Practice makes perfect, and neglect makes for a shitty performance.

And if we get out of touch, if we lose the skills we once had, we can revisit the past; nothing is lost forever. Think of all the amazing things we’ve accomplished; we could do them all again if we wanted to.

And there are some things we’ll never lose.  Things that we learned so young, and use so often; things we never consider.  The basic skills that are part of all of us.

But maybe we were wrong.  Maybe we’ll lose the things we took for granted.  Maybe that hope for the future, that confident voice in our heads saying “I’ve done it before, I can do it again”; maybe it’s a lie.  What if the past is the past, and you can’t go back to enjoy the things you remember so well? 

My life is constantly changing.  The way I interact with the world is changing.  I am giving more thought to basic actions, everyday functions, than I would’ve thought possible.   I am constantly evaluating myself and seeing, feeling, and hearing the changes I fear.  I change; I adapt all the time to make it work. 

It’s difficult to learn when the rules are always changing.