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The Perks Of Being a ‘Change Native’
Personal reflections on what it means to live in a world that’s nothing but change.
“There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives,” said Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. This quote is from an article on Personal Renewal by John Gardner, which my father would re-read each year.
Written in the 1990s, with its profound insight and eternal wisdom, the article became my annual ritual, too.
For the past five years, I start every year with refreshing my perspective on life with Gardner’s words: “If your clock is unwound, you can wind it up again. You can stay alive in every sense of the word until you fail physically.”
To me, this quote is not about running from change, but about embracing it.
Similarly to how the young generation is often labeled as “digital natives”, people whose upbringing was continuously bombarded by forces of change are “change natives.”
Through various life experiences, change became an essential part of my life (I know no other — it’s part of my DNA), and I am comfortable in it like fish in the water. Take that away, and I would navigate through life as a digital native without their GPS.
