On Static vs Dynamic

About two weeks ago, I bought my afternoon coffee and forgot to put milk in it. "Oh well", I figured "I'll just drink it anyway." And so I did. But for the first time in my life, black coffee actually tasted good.

Last night I was brushing my teeth and noticed a prickly white hair poking out of my head. I had seen suspicious bits of white appear when shaving, so the maverick whitey hints at a trend: I'm about to go gray.

Neither of these things bother me. I've watched Shylo's body change so much in the past months because of her pregnancy--her curves have altered, she no longer likes tomatoes, she naps a lot--that it isn't hard to imagine that my body wants to do something different too.

One of the glorious things about growing older is watching how things change, learning what is static about yourself ("I like bicycles") vs what is dynamic ("Just black coffee please thanks"). I still have oblong feet but now I like to run--I never used to.

Perhaps the biggest thing to remember about "the change we can believe in" isn't how much our government can change, it's how we can transform ourselves. The recession has made me spend a lot more time inside, literally and figuratively.

What have I learned? I feel happier as an adult. One of the most powerful things was to learn how to control my moods, find the right tools to avoid being sad. I'm lucky--something I used to think was so static is now dynamic.

So what if my hair turns white? Soon something else will change, and I'll barely notice.