Dealing with change is different from creating change. Dealing with change involves adaptation to what has already taken place and empathy for those who may be having a difficult time doing so.
Regardless of one’s plan of action in the face of change, we all benefit from adapting to the stress of change, especially if it requires acceptance of an outcome which is not in alignment with our own preferences or values. For instance, let’s look at what’s going on regarding LGBT issues in our culture. LGBT activists have worked diligently over the past 25 years or more to create change in our society. It required a vision, a plan, and consistent dedicated effort by many folks to not only change attitudes, but to change the law. However, tens of millions of folks who did not share the same liberal attitudes toward LGBT issues are now having to learn to adapt to these changes. Traditional, conventional attitudes which do not embrace these liberal LGBT issues have been in the collective psyche for hundreds or even thousands of years. Folks who are being asked to embrace practices like same sex marriage, shared gender bathrooms and the use of new pronouns to replace “his” and “hers” will require some time to deal with attitudes and feelings related to these cultural changes. They may feel helpless, fearful and angry because they, their children and others they love are being forced to accept behaviors as being the new normal which they have always believed to be abnormal and/or unacceptable.
While I personally have no problem with these gender related cultural changes, I do have a problem with labeling those who do have a problem as being “homophobic”, as if they were suffering from a disease. I would like to see more empathy and understanding from those who won the cultural gender battle toward those who lost the gender cultural battle.
The same holds true for those who feel they’ve won the cultural political battle after winning the presidency, the house, the senate and, shortly to tip the scale in the Supreme Court. If we are to find success as our culture vacillates from one position to another in these turbulent times, to recognize the “other” with differing opinions and values as “one of us” will allow us to get to a place of balance and equanimity as a culture with fewer wounds and greater acceptance of whatever cultural transitions we go through as a society.
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