Change

What is change? According to the dictionary, it means to make or become different; it implies making either an essential difference often amounting to a loss of original identity or a substitution of one thing for another.

One day last summer, I encountered three instances where people made radical changes.

I have a family friend who had lost his wife of 50 plus years, and I called him periodically to see how he was doing. I had lost my own husband/life partner of 43 years the previous year, so I knew how challenging that can be. The first time I called, he was truly devastated and expressed how lonely he was; he asked me if I was coming to the East Coast--he'd meet me anywhere. He'd love to have me visit.

A short time later I made a second call; he seemed to have a support system developing around him, but he was still lonely. The third time he informed me he had initiated a relationship. WE would be delighted to have me visit, he said.

Wow! That was fast. None of this, "don't make any radical changes for a year" stuff, which was the advice I had received from the hospice social worker and others. He was lonely. BAM! Decision. And I made this momentary judgmental generalization: Men! Freaking Cowards! Can't handle a little loneliness?

But I immediately thought better of it. Why should he be lonely? He knew this woman; he and his wife had provided help and support during her husband's illness and death, and then she was a support during the illness and death of his own wife.

So they had history. And, what the heck! He's 80! Time left...make it count

After digesting that news, I watched a Netflix movie, THE RED GUITAR, about a young woman who, in the course of one day, experiences three things: she learns she has inoperable throat cancer and two months, at the outside, to live; she's being ousted from her job; and her boyfriend is dumping her.

While she's contemplating suicide in her bathtub with a razor blade, which falls to the floor, she sees an ad for short-term rental of a loft in an elegant building.

She investigates and leases this very spacious, totally empty loft with a fabulous view; she has a phone installed, and commences to use her credit cards to order whatever she needs or wants...furniture, decorations, clothing, food. Instead of her usual vegetarian food, she orders pizza.

She sees no one except the pizza delivery girl and the delivery man for her many purchases. Before long she develops relationships with each of them, and then both of them together. This is totally new for her. For awhile, they have a menage a trois.

Most importantly, she remembers her childhood dream of having a red acoustic guitar, which she purchases...along with a bank of huge speakers and some DVDs to teach herself to play guitar.

Time passes, and one day she realizes that two months are up, she has to leave the apartment, she can still talk and she doesn't seem sick. She goes back to the doctor, who is astonished and says: "The cancer's gone. What did you do? What did you change? Your diet? Exercise? What?"

"Everything," she said. "I changed everything."

Her rental period was up; she had to leave the apartment. She sells off the stuff she had purchased, leaves the loft with only her guitar, and goes to the park. She finds a small speaker, and begins to play. Three young musicians come by and hear her. The final scene of the movie...you guessed it: she's playing with a rock bank in a club and having a fabulous time.

Now, that movie was fiction. It so happens that later that day I was to meet some friends to see another movie...THE HANGOVER, about three guys who go to Vegas for a bachelor party with their friend Doug, who's about to be married.

Doug disappears, they can't remember what happened the previous night, and they're trying to find him. At one point, they hear banging from the trunk of their car, and thinking they've found Doug...they pop the trunk!

Who should pop out but...my former internist from my HMO. I kid you not. Stark naked and full frontal nudity. I was a bit shocked to see my former doctor, an Asian gentleman. He does some martial arts sparring, jumps on one of the guys and then runs off. And I thought, Wow! This guy is fearless!

I knew my doctor had left medicine for the comedy circuit, and I had seen him previously play a doctor in the film, KNOCKED UP. Now he had moved up to playing a comical yet dangerous gangster, and his name was prominent in the credits. His movie career is flourishing.

This was a lot for me to ponder in the course of a day...three messages about change. I felt inspired. I'm going to make some changes, I tell myself. Stop waffling.

What was it that Ernest Holmes said about change? Change your thinking, change your life! Each of us today is the result of the use we make of the Law, either consciously or unconsciously. What we are now experiencing is the result of where we focus our attention and thoughts. We can change our thinking...and impress our thoughts upon the ever-present Thinking Stuff of the Universe from which all things come.

So my friend back East, the fictional girl with her guitar dreams, and the HMO doctor...followed their hearts, took the actions they needed to take...and are living the dream. It CAN be done. And so it is.