There was an article in the Opinion section of last week’s Sunday New York Times entitled, “Stop Resisting Change.”  Presumably, the author used the imperative tense to try to shake his readers loose from their attachments to things, rituals, schedules – you name it.  The essay was written by Brad Stulberg, who appears to be some kind of “performance coach” and wants to tell us that change is a “force for growth.” He reminds us that, even 2,500 years ago, Heraclitus knew you can’t step into the same river twice.  Stulberg asserts that “adopting an allostatic outlook acknowledges that the goal of mature adulthood is not to avoid, fight or even try to control change, but rather to skillfully engage with it.”  Allostasis/allostatic is apparently a new coinage for our times and posits “a healthy baseline as being a moving target.”  Sounds too much like dodge ball to me.

This is what performance coach Stulberg says in the end:

To thrive in our lifetimes – and not just survive – we need to transform our relationship with change, leaving behind rigidity and resistance in favor of a new nimbleness, a means of viewing more of what life throws at us as something to participate in, rather than fight.  We are always shaping and being shaped by change, often at the very same time.

I’m guessing that, in my case, it might be too late for a “new nimbleness,” but I certainly admit that change is a constant challenge.  Recently our smart TV lost some of its smarts, and I had to figure out how to reboot it and wasted almost an entire day before I decided it was a hopeless endeavor.  Like most baby-boomers, I have spent years of my working life learning new computer systems, trying to figure out the best way to use email or social media, and remembering that my cell phone needs to be charged.  I have been forced to change, but I am not convinced it has done good things for me.

Lately, I have been wondering whether society would be better served if we didn’t assume that change is good and that we should learn to “cope” with it.  Isn’t “coping” how we ended up with climate chaos and mechanical voices on the doctor’s phone line?  With children who hold conversations with one eye on their cell phones? Perhaps continued “nimbleness” is a mistake.  Perhaps a little resistance is in order.  Perhaps a lot of resistance is overdue.  Maybe we should just enjoy sitting by Heraclitus’s river and feel no need to wade into it.

I am particularly thinking about change today because I am mourning the passing of the Netflix DVD program at the end of this month.  For many years, we have spent many Saturday nights with a DVD movie, espresso, and dessert.  And yes, I have learned to stream movies over the past year, but there was something about that red envelope arriving in the mail and waiting on the counter to be inserted into a simple machine for Saturday night watching.  Once in while the disc was defective, but we never missed our movie because I didn’t know how to work the technology.  On the envelope was useful information – who was in the movie, how long it was, and whether it was too sexy for 17-year-olds.  It was, as far as I was concerned, a perfect technology.  When I went out to get the Sunday Times in the morning, I put the disc in the mail and waited until Thursday or Friday to discover what from our wish list would arrive for the next weekend.  Such are the simple date nights of seventy-somethings.

Plus, Netflix had a good selection of old movies including our favorite Powell and Pressburger productions and the silly 1950’s comedies that have picked up our spirits at the end of some hard weeks.  Our generation has seen the demise of tube televisions, rotor antennas, VCR’s, 8 tracks, cassettes, Walkmans, and I fear, eventually our CD’s and DVD’s.  In our lifetime, we learned to type on mechanical typewriters, then electric typewriters, then word processors.  We have learned to make our own travel reservations online and print our own boarding passes.  And those are only minor examples.  Make your own list of how you did things in the 50s or 60s.  Reflect on how life has changed, the new technology you had to learn in order to cope with that change, the continual upending of the patterns of daily life. I know I sound like the old lady that I am, but old people are supposed to have garnered a little wisdom over time.  My learnings include this:  some technology and related change was for the good, no doubt – but none of it was unalloyed good, and we should keep that foremost in our minds as AI creeps up on us.  How do we even know that so much change is good for us?  This assumption that constant adaptation is a good thing seems to be a social experiment on a grand scale (without a control group), and we are the white rats being encouraged to keep up with the program.  (Now I sound and feel like a grumpy old lady.)

It often seems that it is only when I finally learn to adequately use the new technology that it disappears.  I am sure we will not be the only ones who will be desolate at the end of the month when our last movie arrives.  The good news is that, rather than destroying their inventory, Netflix will empty its warehouses by sending multiple DVDs to their subscribers.  I hope they include our favorites.  And I hope someone keeps making DVD players.

To think about ways to resist change, you might try my story, “Nothing New.”