Physicists will tell you that the only eternal truth is entropy — left to itself, a system changes toward a condition of maximum disorder and utter chaos. Experience tells me otherwise. Change is resisted even in the throes of chaos. On an intellectual level, acceptance is learned. We acknowledge that things change, disappear, transform, or are lost. On an emotional and spiritual level, inertia reigns. We lament what has changed, miss what has disappeared, sentimentalize what is transformed, and grieve what is lost. Like a man who has lost a limb, the thing that is gone remains a part of you. The beat of its phantom pulse still connects you to what was.
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