This is http://www.essayz.com/a8906151.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %CHANGE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP TRUST HONEST OPEN 890615 Change is ever present. That which seems permanent is not really permanent; it too will change eventually, just as it was not always so. The universe has not existed eternally; nothing about the universe has been permanent. There is no evidence that anything in the universe is permanent now. People change: birth, childhood, adolescence, young adult, marriage, parenting, empty nest, retirement, death. No stage of life is permanent. No habits of mind and heart are permanent. No life-style or daily routine is permanent. Through experience people change: childish naivete is replaced by something else, youth's impulsiveness is replaced by more measured responses, adolescents' idealism is followed by some form of realism, etc. Through experience and schooling knowledge is gained; and sometimes wisdom grows. As people and their social contexts change the relationships between pairs of people change. Relationships cannot remain unchanged as the participants in the relationship and their social context change. To try to freeze a relationship into some pattern of habits of mind, heart and behavior is to change it through attempting to control the relationship. Relationships change as people discover that they can or cannot trust each other. Young people discover that they cannot trust their parents and become alienated from their parents. Young people discover other young people whom that they can trust, and new intimate relationships grow. Young people discover that they can or cannot trust certain institutional forms, professions, businesses, governments, etc. Those discoveries lead to new habits of mind and heart, and to new patterns of behavior. Change flows from the discovery of the presence or lack of integrity in other persons and in institutional structures. These changes are not always conscious changes. We rarely remember the details of the experiences which lead us to stop trusting a parent, a spouse, a friend, an associate; the discovery and decisions associated with it may be just barely at the level of consciousness and too painful to deal with consciously, and the discovery is often forgotten as to details. Often such discoveries and decisions are made by children and young people before they have developed any real sense of identity and self consciousness; all based upon intuitive insights and convictions regarding what is needful to maintain personal integrity. Addicts and their codependent supporters are not trustworthy. The children, spouses, friends, and associates of addicts, and their codependent supporters, need to discover that addicts are not trustworthy and need to learn how to deal with that truth openly and honestly. "When Society becomes an Addict" (a book by Anne Wilson Schaef) has much to say about the implications of discovering that people are not trustworthy. The book "The Addictive Organization" (also by Schaef) details many of the implications of the above to organizational structures, businesses, governments, etc. If we want to change in creative ways we need to avoid disintegrative changes. That can be done only as we understand in some meaningful way the nature of personal and communal integrity, and the nature of personal and communal disintegration. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================