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“There is a time for everything, and a season for every purpose under heaven.”

On its face, this well-known King Solomon wisdom from the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes delivers hopeful encouragement. But implicit in this passage is a somewhat hidden, and often troublesome, paradox: A time for everything also implies nothing can be forever, and therefore, change is inevitable.

In the abstract, we accept the reality of change, but in practice we regard it like the medicine we know we need, but don’t want to take. And knowing change is inevitable doesn’t make the pill any sweeter.

In the marketplace, it was challenging enough to implement a change when we had the expectation of not having to do it again anytime soon. But in the 21st century, the bitter pill of change has acquired an unfortunate new characteristic: a frighteningly short duration.

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Storytelling: older than the marketplace

 Cogito ergo sum. French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed this idea in 1637, which translates to “I think, therefore I am.” Certainly, the power of abstract thought is what separates humans from other animals. 

Anthropologists now believe Homo sapiens succeeded, unlike other members of the genus Homo, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon for example, because their (our) brains had a greater capacity for speech and language. Today Descartes might modify his philosophy to “I think and speak, therefore I am.”  In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith proposed the written word as one of the three great human inventions; the other two are money and mathematics. But long before humans were writing we were telling stories. And these stories – told, memorized and retold over millennia – became the headwaters of human development. We, humans, love to tell stories almost as much as we love to listen to them. 

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This is Jim’s traditional Christmas column.

Some say I’m a scrooge. They might be right.

Here are three exhibits (some say excuses) in my defense of this indictment:

1. The early part of my career was spent in retail. Retailers know what that does to your holiday spirit. There’s a syndrome for everything else; why not one for retail survivors? Let’s call it PTHSS: Post-Traumatic Holiday Shock Syndrome.

2.  Since I don’t wait until the holidays to give someone a gift, I just don’t get all worked up about holiday giving. Not that the ladies mind getting stuff all year (let’s not lose our heads!).  It’s just that they want me to be giddy about giving at Christmas-time. Giddy? Bah! Humbug!

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