Over breakfast, I was talking about the noun 'change' and its relationship to self-esteem when my teenager interjected with a decisive "what does change really mean? Its just another word, like", she paused for a moment while trying to find a comparative before exclaiming "moving!"
"What is interesting about talking about this moving and that moving?" she challenged me and I nodded my head, to make it look like my brain was moving when she did the thinking for me by exclaiming "nothing!"
Now my brain was moving defensively around what she meant by nothing because I'd just spent the past seven years researching human change. Was it all ado about nothing? When the light bulb went on and who would know more about changing than a young person. Babies, adolescents and teenage bodies and minds are furiously changing, all of the time, yet no matter what life throws at them, they handle all of it. From the first day all of us are born, our bodies are changing, our minds are changing, our sight is changing, our relativity is changing, our perspectives are constantly changing. My teenage daughter feels change is about motion and that motion at that precise point of time felt like nothing. How interesting!
It felt like only yesterday that she was my baby and today she is looking me straight in the eye and telling me that my discussion about the noun change is about nothing.
"I think change must be an adult concept" I said to her, thinking if youthful change doesn't feel like anything, when does the feeling of change emerge? Is it when change begins to materialise that adults begin to notice it? Is the noun change more of a timed experience than a motion?
"How do you feel?" I asked, more as a reflection of my ponderous mood than hers.
"Happy" she smiled, changing the subject: And as I sat watching my lovely daughter animating her sharing of her experiences, I felt myself thinking about how changing verbs activate self-esteem a great deal better than a noun called change ever could. © Chris Tyne, 2013.
"What is interesting about talking about this moving and that moving?" she challenged me and I nodded my head, to make it look like my brain was moving when she did the thinking for me by exclaiming "nothing!"
Now my brain was moving defensively around what she meant by nothing because I'd just spent the past seven years researching human change. Was it all ado about nothing? When the light bulb went on and who would know more about changing than a young person. Babies, adolescents and teenage bodies and minds are furiously changing, all of the time, yet no matter what life throws at them, they handle all of it. From the first day all of us are born, our bodies are changing, our minds are changing, our sight is changing, our relativity is changing, our perspectives are constantly changing. My teenage daughter feels change is about motion and that motion at that precise point of time felt like nothing. How interesting!
It felt like only yesterday that she was my baby and today she is looking me straight in the eye and telling me that my discussion about the noun change is about nothing.
"I think change must be an adult concept" I said to her, thinking if youthful change doesn't feel like anything, when does the feeling of change emerge? Is it when change begins to materialise that adults begin to notice it? Is the noun change more of a timed experience than a motion?
"How do you feel?" I asked, more as a reflection of my ponderous mood than hers.
"Happy" she smiled, changing the subject: And as I sat watching my lovely daughter animating her sharing of her experiences, I felt myself thinking about how changing verbs activate self-esteem a great deal better than a noun called change ever could. © Chris Tyne, 2013.
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