Familiarity and Change

My nephew has been attending the university where I work. It's a residential school, so he lives in the dorm, but he brings his laundry over to our house since doing wash at our house is free. I love having Nephew come over every couple of weeks. He's fun to have around, and it gives me a chance to catch up with what's happening in his life without the distractions of campus surrounding us.

Last week when I was in a budget meeting at the university, the news crossed my radar that next year the dorms are going to get rid of the coin-operated washer system and let the students use the washers and dryers for free. Hmmm, I thought. Certainly our lad will want do his wash while he's doing other things at the dorm. I felt a bit sad that we'd likely see him less. I dropped him a note on Facebook to find out what he was doing on this long weekend off, and mentioned that the dorm washers were going to be free next year.

"Free laundry doings can't keep me away," he wrote back. "Unless you'd like it to."

I responded that I'd be delighted to have him continue to come over.

"Then I'll continue on with you guys," he said, "since I know how to use your washer."

Ah! It's not us, it's the familiarity of the system! Nephew doesn't want to learn a new washer even if it's just down the hall from his dorm room!

Isn't that like many of us, though? We like novelty in experiences, but in the processes of life many of us prefer familiarity. There's something about learning a new system that takes more energy, and we'll go out of our way to avoid change. Why choose yet one more change in a life that foists it on us all the time?

While I'm happy to know that Nephew will continue do laundry at our place, it occurs to me that in some areas of life we need to choose unfamiliarity. It's hard to break free of our settled routines to do things we should do: pay more attention to people, spend more time in prayer and meditation, spend less time crawling the internet, get exercise daily, give up cooking with so much oil and salt and sugar, take a class and learn something new, and so on. Preserving familiarity is not necessarily the most healthy way to live life.

Is it time to spin off and learn a new system in some other part of my life? What might that be?