April 24, 2005

Weathered By Change

Outside the train windows as I write this, it is impossible to ignore the arrival of spring. Green is sprouting everywhere; the seasons are changing from winter to spring, overdue but inevitable.

Change. Along with death and taxes, change is the constant. Nothing stays the same, no matter how hard one hopes to hold onto a particular moment. Moments are just that: moments.

Last week at CINE, a film and video organization based in Washington, D.C., the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Roger Ebert who was introduced by film critic Tom Shales. What follows next is a paraphrase of Mr. Shales’ words.

He talked about the power of film, the role of the critic in commenting upon film and its reflection of individuals, each carrying forward their selves, trapped within the shell of a particular being, from birth to death. We cannot escape ourselves even while we are constantly changing, moment to moment. We are the additive sum of all events that have happened to us while constantly evolving as a result of those events.

We are the sum of triumphs, tragedies, laughter, tears, pratfalls, broken love affairs, all the things that have happened to us, creating one “I”, one unique character on a planet filled with billions of them.

Looking around me, I see others are changing too. A friend of mine has tempered and matured recently as the result of the stresses of her job. She is the same person and different.

Cities change. New York is New York but it is always a little different everyday. Something goes up; something comes down but its soul remains. Los Angeles is a state of mind; constantly changing its mind.

Gail Sheehey wrote a book called “Passages” and another specifically about the passages men make, passing from one phase of life to another. A small thing can suddenly result in embarking on a life changing internal journey from one continent in one’s world to another. Or it can be triggered by something larger, a 9/11, when both the city and its inhabitants began a passage, neither ever being the same again.

Couples go through changes and passages; sometimes they are frightening maelstroms of emotion, suddenly precipitated and perhaps only articulated in a sudden, single moment, but once a bridge has been crossed, nothing will be quite the same again.

It does not mean it won’t be better; it will just not be the same.

We are all living in a state of flux and there are times when that flux is so frightening we revert to old behaviors in an effort to find comfort against the internal storm.

Confronting mortality is frightening. Is it any wonder that at mid-life, a younger person seems more attractive than the current companion? Many, male and female, yearn at some point to return to a period of their life when their hearts were young and not burdened by the cares of children, long term relationships, aging, sickly parents, career disappointments, their own physical pains? Who does not want at some moment or other to be twenty-five again, if only for a time?

Yet change is uncomfortable and frightening. We have a certain natural resistance to it. Frequently we do our best to avoid it. Look at the Catholic Church. John Paul II is gone so, in almost record time, the conclave of Cardinals elected the man who had been called his “vice Pope.” His apparent theological inflexibility is as comforting to many as it is concerning to others. But it is definitely a move to hold the status quo for at least a bit longer. At 78, he might not reign for long – though he seems spry enough to surprise.

[Am I the only one to wonder: have we not devoted a surprising amount of attention to the passing of one Pope and the election of the next? It seems the whole western world has been acting Italian and Catholic the last few weeks.]

Popes die, cities re-mould themselves, love affairs inevitably change, sometimes dying in mid-moment and sometimes growing deeper once the tsunami passes. It is how we weather change that defines our strength as individuals, as cities, as nations, as a race.

Mathew Tombers is Managing Director of Intermat, Inc., (www.intermat.tv) a television company which executive produces programs and consults with industry companies on a variety of issues. Intermat, Inc. is currently involved in approximately thirty hours of television in various stages for a variety of networks. He is one of the Executive Producers of OFF TO WAR, a ten hour series for Discovery Times and for a one hour on international adoptions for Discovery Health. He has consulted a variety of companies, including Ted Turner Documentaries, WETA, Betelgeuse Productions, and Creation Films, Lou Reda Productions as well as many others.