{"id":12132,"date":"2025-12-24T20:03:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/ursula-k-le-guins-remedy-for-our-resistance-to-change-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T20:03:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:03:55","slug":"ursula-k-le-guins-remedy-for-our-resistance-to-change-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/ursula-k-le-guins-remedy-for-our-resistance-to-change-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

The most assuring thing about life is that we can change, that things can change, that they are always changing. The most maddening is that despite living in a universe that is one constant transmutation of energy and matter, despite living in bodies and minds whose cells and ideas are constantly being replaced, we so vehemently resist change, too afraid to unsettle the structure of our lives \u2014 even when it doesn\u2019t serve us. \u201cPeople wish to be settled,\u201d Emerson wrote<\/a>, \u201c[but] only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.\u201d In another epoch, another prophet consecrated the elemental: \u201cAll that you touch you change,\u201d wrote<\/a> Octavia Butler. \u201cAll that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.\u201d <\/p>\n

If suffering is the magnitude of our resistance to reality, and if change is the fundamental constant of reality, then our resistance to change is our self-directed instrument of suffering. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Ursula K. Le Guin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Half a lifetime before her brilliant meditation on menopause as a microcosm of the human animal\u2019s hostility to change<\/a>, Ursula K. Le Guin<\/a> (October 21, 1929\u2013January 22, 2018) offered a perfect refutation of the central fallacy at the heart of our resistance to change \u2014 our tendency to mistake stasis for equilibrium and to mistake the complacency of equilibrium for contentment \u2014 in a passage from her 1971 novel The Lathe Of Heaven<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Speaking to a part that lives in all of us \u2014 the \u201cself-cancelling, centerpoised personality\u201d that leads us \u201cto look at things defensively\u201d \u2014 one character urges another:<\/p>\n

\n

Why are you so afraid of yourself\u2026 of changing things? Try to detach yourself from yourself and try to see your own viewpoint from the outside, objectively. You are afraid of losing your balance. But change need not unbalance you; life\u2019s not a static object, after all. It\u2019s a process. There\u2019s no holding still. Intellectually you know that, but emotionally you refuse it. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can\u2019t step into the same river twice. Life \u2014 evolution \u2014 the whole universe of space\/time, matter\/energy \u2014 existence itself \u2014 is essentially change\u2026 When things don\u2019t change any longer, that\u2019s the end result of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is \u2014 and the more life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Observing that life itself, like love<\/a>, is \u201ca huge gamble against the odds,\u201d he insists that, just as we must love anyway<\/a>, we must live anyway:<\/p>\n

\n

You can\u2019t try to live safely, there\u2019s no such thing as safety. Stick your neck out of your shell, then, and live fully.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living<\/a>, Terry Tempest Williams on the paradox of change<\/a>, and Nathaniel Hawthorne on how not to waste your life<\/a>, then revisit Le Guin on suffering and getting to the other side of pain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most assuring thing about life is that we can change, that things can change, that they are always changing. The most maddening is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}