Shift Happens!

No, I have not erred in titling this post. I have not misspelled the first word. Yes, that other phrase is often appropriate, but what I want to say is a kind of counter response to that other phrase.

It is now 4PM on August 26, 2019. Fifty-seven years ago, within the past thirty minutes, Jane’s pastor asked us to plight our troth and spoke the words that announced us husband and wife. Nineteen thousand eight hundred and five days, plus the leap days in the leap years, we have been married. That is nearly five hundred thousand, nearly half a million, hours!

I am not the boy, nor is she the girl who answered those questions and spoke those promises. We have changed. She no longer appears to be the wasp-waisted nymph, nor do I appear the trim, flat-topped lad of 1962.

We have changed. Who can identify the metamorphoses? Neither of us can. We have each noticed the differences. We have even welcomed most of those new selves our partner has become. And those we’d rather not have had to greet, we have accepted or just ignored.

Perhaps that is a part of the secret to a long and happy marriage. We have both, with little more than a nod, pledged that troth over and over again in a kind of serial monogamy.

I am glad to have experienced what the Buddha identified. Nothing remains the same. Shift happens.