Like it or not, it’s inevitable that life is change as the clock of life keeps on ticking.
It’s become true-for me-that the mark of a well-adjusted person is one who readily adapts to change and accepts his new circumstances and inevitable challenges they bring. Our biggest problems seem to arise when we keep trying to do the same things we were doing before life changed course on us.
It’s why books like Who Moved my Cheese? become best-sellers and lovable movie dolt Forrest Gump assured us back in 1994 that life is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you’re gonna get.
I’m no different than anyone else. I’ve made 10 major life changes across a career spanning nearly 42 years. Most of those entailed changing communities, newspapers, job responsibilities, friendships, colleagues, family ties and expectations of me at every turn.
From Newport to Hot Springs, to the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, back to Little Rock, the Arizona Republic, Ohio State, to the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, to Fayetteville, to my hometown of Harrison, and back to Fayetteville as a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Whew! It actually wears me out just to read all that.
I actually lost track a while back of how many houses I’ve purchased and called home along the way. Of course, I chose a craft that is mobile by nature. It’s a career where most journalists start small and strive to get to the “gig time” population centers only to discover once there that the only things different are the people, the congestion, taxes and the salary.
It’s still journalism, no matter where you practice it.
My former journalism professor and cherished mentor, Dean Duncan, told me back in my 22nd year, as I was beginning my first real job as editor of the Newport Daily Independent, that he believed I was fortunate because I had found my life’s calling at an early age. I realize now that he was right. I wasn’t designed in my DNA to earn the far-bigger bucks in a different field. Nope. I was supposed to do what I have done now for four decades that seem to have flown by in a matter of months.
Those reading today are bound to have similar but unique stories: Changes in career, lifestyle, dwellings, expectations, income, friendships, faith, family, you name it.
I wrote several years back about a study that said most adults become different people in their outlook on life about every seven years. In other words, you change in many ways during that period-you no longer feel, act, think or perceive things the way you did then.
Is it true? I can’t say with any authority. But it sure feels that way when I reflect over my six decades. I believed differently when I was 30 than I did at 23. And at 44 I was different in many ways than I was at 37.
Even most cells of our bodies replenish and replace themselves across the decades of our lives, according to studies I’ve read.
Most change in our lives comes from our choices and the people who shift in and out of our personal field of consciousness. The good ones leave more of an impact than the bad ones, I believe, and in far different ways. In that respect, I’ve lived a fortunate life filled with supportive employers and encouraging friendships.
Over the decades, I’ve continued to experience the same stirrings that led me into my craft-to write about the people of my native state and to question on their behalves whenever I believed deeper truths had been hidden. It’s a simple philosophy, actually, that led me to write columns about the likes of gastric-bypass patients; the state health department’s nursing woes; aluminum sludge in Beaver Lake; NWACC’s firing of Marty Parsons; and the sweet 16-year-old late Janie Ward of Marshall, who never will be forgotten in our state.
I’m in a state of reverie today because change has come a-callin’ yet again at this stage. Tick, tock, tick tock . . .
As of last Saturday, I am no longer the NWA Opinion Editor for the paper.
Triggered by the sustained pathetic economic conditions in the nation, things are changing dramatically across the landscape of this business, prompting consolidations and sadly, reductions in staff sizes and even abbreviated publication days in virtually every city and town.
So, on Saturday, I became an independent correspondent who will continue to produce three personal opinion columns weekly for the paper, while free to write elsewhere as long as the publication doesn’t compete with this newspaper.
Naturally, I’ll adjust. But I am grateful that publisher Walter Hussman; Jeff Jeffus, president of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC; and others who must make agonizing-purely business-decisions that seriously affect the lives of loyal employees in such hard times saw the value of my regular offerings to you, the valued readers.
Meanwhile, you can contact me today at [email protected]. Thanks again for reading, good people of my home state. As my late friend Dr. Bill Hudson’s raggedy Tshirt read: “Life is a river, go with the flow.” Tick tock, tick tock.
———◊———
Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 13 on 09/04/2012