That Virus (you know the one) came bearing lessons that too many of us hope we don’t need to learn. Maybe if there is an app for that…

However, there is one of lesson we should heed soon, if not right now. It is a variation on Murphy’s Law. (To remind you, here’s my take on Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will.)

Murphy’s Law comes in rather handy when we must explain a blooper. That is, when we need to redirect blame.

I predict that this new law will be just as useful. And as devastating.

Let’s call this new law The Law of Mutating Pathogens: If something can change, it will.

We have been warned.

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Remember To Forget To Change

Do you find it more difficult to adapt and change as you age? Blame it on time.

Time enables us to frame our experiences as past-present-future. If we were to experience time as only now, then we would find it impossible to make sense of events. But this past-present-future sense-making traps us into linear thinking.

Our memory of many a yesterday creates the comfort that there will be many a tomorrow. And there’s the problem. Memory creates the illusion that the future will be a continuation of the past.

The more yesterdays we accumulate, the more we approach tomorrow expecting continuity, not disruption. No wonder we find it difficult to start over, to begin anew.

Babies don’t have many yesterdays. To them, every day is a blank slate, a new beginning. Change is so much easier if every day is a clean slate.

But the older we get, the more it seems as if a clean slate is only possible if we remember to forget.

Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.