Dealing with change that fills our lives
Firefighters extinguish a brush fire in Twelve Pines Park in Medford, one of dozens on Long Island in recent months. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
We sat down to dinner on a recent Friday night, and with the meal we had a salad. On the salad were tomatoes — from our garden.
This was on Nov. 15.
In our long and modest endeavors as home gardeners, eating our own fresh-picked tomatoes in the middle of November was more than rare. It had never happened before. And it's not likely that it's because we've suddenly become better gardeners.
Something is happening.
The other day, one of those weather experts who frequent television programs made an observation. "The Northeast is becoming fire country," he said, another thing that had never been true before. His observation, echoed in much of the news coverage that followed, came after brush fires in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, a much larger blaze on the border of New York and New Jersey, and drought warnings all over the region, including on Long Island.
Something is happening.
For years, the ocean has been creeping closer to the snack stands, restrooms and parking lots of some of my favorite South Shore beaches. Occasionally, Mother Nature or a human-made dredging machine restores some of the sand that has disappeared, but then the trend lines reassert themselves and the ocean gobbles up the beach again.
Something is happening.
What's happening, of course, is change. And change is a funny thing.
Sometimes change hits us in the face. Sometimes it creeps into view. Sometimes it's easy to see as change. Sometimes it takes a while for the picture to come into focus. For every overpowering 10-inch rainfall somewhere, there is slow but steady erosion somewhere else.
The change itself is one thing. What's really important is how we respond.
Do we, for example, look at the fire in Prospect Park and the 270 other brush fires the FDNY responded to in the first half of this month and console ourselves by observing that Octobers generally have been getting wetter over the decades and so this autumn's drought that spiked the fire risk could well be an oddity? Or do we juxtapose these conflagrations with what we've observed about hotter temperatures, droughts and fires elsewhere in the world and conclude that it's our turn in the climate bull's-eye?
Do we passively watch our shoreline retreating, vacuously hoping that the process will slow down or revert, or do we start doing something that will help make an actual difference in the long fight?
Change comes in all sizes. In my neighborhood, members of an online group have been sharing observations about what seems like a group of young guys who suddenly are breaking into cars and burglarizing them. They pop up here and there, on one street and then another. It's a disquieting change, but residents are learning to lock their car doors, open their eyes, and keep free the lines of communication.
Lessons about responding hold true in all arenas of change. And that's important at a time when our lives are suffused with change.
Our communities are evolving via demographic change. Technology continues its march, enriching us but also isolating us, splintering us into opposing camps, and intruding ever more deeply into our lives. Pandemics come and go and threaten to come again. Working patterns — and the very nature of work itself — are changing. All this while the influence of religion and other traditional institutions continues to weaken. And again, we are bracing ourselves for political change, after an election that in many ways was all about change.
How do we respond? How do we distinguish between what is merely provocative and what signals real advancement or regression?
Some change is a five-alarm fire. Some is a gentle warning. Some is an anomaly. Wisdom lies in being able to tell the difference.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.