FLAKES: Constant change

About 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said, “The only thing that is constant is change” (and I was almost about to add “And nothing has changed since...”).

Then in 1849, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in his journal, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” which roughly translates as “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” When I combine these two appealing quotations, I obtain what I call the diabolical paradox of change – things constantly change to become the same thing.

However, paradoxes aside, I recently had to cope with so many changes that I sallied along to my favourite bookshop, bought a book about change and tried to follow its advice.

The first instruction in the book is to learn to love what you hate. I should have known that anything that has something to do with change was going to be confusing!

I immediately made a list of the things I hate: lies, bottle green, sports utility vehicles, social climbers and mandazis.

Now the challenge is how I am going to fall in love with these things. Perhaps I could completely change myself and become a mandazi tycoon by convincing everyone that it is a health food.

I would then invest in a personalised bottle-green SUV and thus immediately catapult myself into the highest echelons of society. This would certainly be a change. Perhaps I should turn to the next chapter.

MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION

Okay, almost as bad: “Do what you can’t.” Actually, I’m already almost there. As a child I was so unco-ordinated that I could not catch anything. Indeed whenever someone in my family had a spare moment they would amuse themselves by throwing something at me and asking me to catch it.

They would then watch my fumbling movements as the item fell to the ground and die laughing.

However, suddenly, half a century later I can catch anything with perfect reflexes. The only problem is that I don’t understand how it happened so I don’t know how to replicate this miraculous transformation.

So maybe I will have to wait another 50 years before I can implement the advice in this chapter. Moving on...

The third chapter certainly sounds more promising: “Turn accomplices into friends.” I thought that accomplices are friends? “Birds of a feather flock together” and all that... However, maybe it is more “There is no honour among thieves.” If I understand what the authors are really getting at is that to change, you either have to change your friends or change friends.

Unfortunately I like my friends exactly the way they are, indeed that is why they are my friends! Next...

The next piece of advice is to “invert the economy.”

Since I have just all purchased the book where Professor Ha-joon Chang promises to demystify economics, I thought I could definitely make an attempt to do this. Prof. explains that economics is just plain common sense obscured behind complex jargon and mathematical equations, so how could I go about inverting it? Would it be by using nonsense to debunk calculus?

Could it be by using plain language to explain economic principles? Could it be by targeting to grow by 90 per cent instead of 10 per cent or, more negatively, to contract the economy by 10 per cent? My head is spinning in its effort to invert and I am relieved to turn to the last instruction...

It sounds simple enough: “Control your space.” However, to succeed at this one you have to (a) live alone, (b) regularly fumigate your house so that the insect kingdom does not begin to reign there, (c) be completely free of addictions such as interior decoration-chosis, book-holism or fashion-phrenics.

Relatives-by-choice, bugs and hobbies are quick to grab space and convert it to their own uses.

Okay, I better just be honest and admit that my space has run away with me. It’s a good book but I chuck it onto the pile of change books that have met a similar fate. I have just proved to myself the diabolical paradox of change. Make a change this weekend.