1. Ancestral Law of Change

In the face of change our ancestors sought to optimize their quality of life.  When environmental change became threatening they adapted by employing new coping strategies or by moving to locations where tried and true coping strategies would minimize the effects of change.  We have inherited a measure of those coping skills in the form of ancestral memory, or ‘code’ transmitted to us either genetically or in learned behaviors passed through the generations to now.

Change is inevitable in our lives and a large portion of this change occurs within the range of responses we are programmed to exhibit via genetics, learned behavior and an innate desire to thrive.  When environmental change overwhelms our normal abilities we must do something different to survive, tapping into undiscovered reservoirs of adaptive capacity.  If we stay in place we will have to design and test new strategies, effectively expanding our capacities.  If moving to a new location is called for then we should find one best suited to our current capabilities.  In this respect our ancestors behaved as we do.

Environmental change, including change driven by social institutions, stems from a widely varying set of influences that affect us individually or that influence our family, community or even the nation as a whole.  All such change impacts us in some way.  Impacts can be direct or indirect, acute or chronic.  They can vary in intensity and frequency.  Whatever the source, measure or direction of impact, change leads to stress and stress has some level of effect on us -- body, mind and spirit. 

No surprise…we perceive some changes as positive, others as negative.  Positive stress or eustress creates conditions that harmonize with our current state of well being – our physical, mental and spiritual selves.  Eustress rarely requires a reactive response other than efforts to prolong or maximize the situation for as long as possible.  Negative stress or distress usually leads to the opposite response.  Distress has a deleterious impact, takes a toll.  Being pleasure-centered beings we want to maximize eustress and minimize distress.  However we respond we draw to some degree on genetic programming we inherited from our forebears, our ancestors.  Their programming, their learned behavior, allowed them to survive.  Many of those strategies were passed on to us.  We draw on that programming, in combination with our own learned behavior, to optimize our response and to ensure the survivability of our offspring.  When we are happy, satisfied and fulfilled we unconsciously acknowledge that our adaptive wiring has worked, that circumstances are sufficient to ensure well being and a perpetuation of our own kind.  When we are unhappy, dissatisfied or left with unfulfilled needs we record that experience too.  This way we may avoid similar circumstances in the future.  Whether distress is subtle or overt, short-lived or prolonged, the effect is recorded.  We take mental note of the causes and effects of distress.  These new lessons lead to learning and new learning can lead to new, adaptive behaviors helping us to avoid distress and to invite eustress.  Synapses store the information in brain cells.  The physical body sometimes re-patterns itself.  The structure of our DNA may be altered.  

Distress is the source of greatest adaptive change.  When happiness turns to sorrow, when satisfaction is supplanted by discontent, when fulfillment gives way to privation, survival responses kick in.  Whether distress is slight or severe we are pre-programmed to protect ourselves from any perceived threat to well being.  We may express this programming in some emotional or physical way, or we may contain the response.  Regardless of how we react our programming prepares us for ‘fight or flight’.  In our bloodstream flows a multiplicity of complex chemicals empowering organs, muscles and brain to protect personal well being, to protect our offspring, and to ensure the perpetuation of our own kind.

Our capacity to adapt to distress establishes our level of fitness.  If we are fit enough we will ensure self- preservation as well as the survival of our offspring.  But if fitness is insufficient, unequal to the challenges of life such that our gene stock is prematurely extinguished then we have by definition failed at the big task of life.  We were unable to adapt to change.  Our gene stock and our capacity to learn and respond to distress were inadequate in the face of current conditions.  We were not inventive enough.  We did not move in time.  We succumbed. 

If we look back through the genealogical record we are reminded over and over of our current fortunate status.  We have survived to the present day by a combination of hard work, inventiveness and plain good fortune experienced by dozens if not hundreds of generations that preceded us.  Ancestors by the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands – grandfathers and grandmothers all – lived their lives and gave rise to us.  If we study our individual family history in enough detail we will discover that small percentage of historically significant ancestors, people who changed their world in their time and therefore for our time too.  In some measure we have inherited characteristics and behaviors these forebears exhibited.  But the vast majority of these forerunners were simple people often living difficult lives at the whim of tyrants or in the face of war, economic uncertainty or the ambiguities of nature.  The programming we inherited from them attests to an intricate tapestry of these passages, historic or otherwise, lived well enough that we can walk upon the planet today.  Looking to the future we should acknowledge the uncounted souls with whom we share the planet today.  Together we will produce the next crop of descendants who may carry our collective experience forward.   Perhaps they will be better prepared to deal with tomorrow's tyrants, strife or environmental change.  

Our lives play out as a single thread in an intricate, unfolding genealogical tapestry woven a little tighter each day.  Change is upon us.  May our children's children thrive in part due to the lessons we have been able to convey.