After slightly threatening encouragements at the top of my web browser, I finally switched over my Yahoo page from the older version to the new format. The sad part is I’m pretty sure they made this replacement sometime last spring. But the time had come where I would be forced to automatically convert to New Yahoo.

I literally waited as long as I could. And it’s not like I didn’t like the new version: I had followed the “Check It Out!” arrow on my screen months before. I could still find my e-mails, celebrity gossip and online crossword puzzles, but I just didn’t want to change.

Ah, Change. You naked monkey of a distraction. You enter my life, slap me in the face with your ape hand and beg me to follow you.  It could be to a saucy jungle oasis with pool boys in loincloths for all I know. But I am so thrown-off by your naked monkey-ness that I can’t even think about where you’re leading me!

It seems like now is a time of ever-occurring change. New technologies, new points of view, new politics, new conflicts. These are all begging for us to change our outlook or change our lifestyle. Society is required to adapt to these new changes at every corner, but I feel adapting doesn’t mean completely changing who you are.

Yet if we take this view we get ourselves on a slippery slope: How much change is too much change?

I am enthusiastically supportive of the eco-friendly lifestyle, and I know my limits as to how far I will go to foster that ideal without losing my self-identity. I am willing to change in this sense.

But for small things, like the Yahoo page, or even the new Gustavus webpage, I find myself unsettled. The increasing postage and the new electronic checkout at my hometown library make me feel the same way. Why is it that I can change for some things and some I can’t?

I don’t think it is a matter of the size of the change. Yes, having to swipe my card to check out a library book is a lot less intimidating than having to completely change my ideas about eco-friendly transportation, but they are both parts of who I am and how I function in this world.

Perhaps it is a matter of willingness to change and acknowledging the real-life benefits of changing.

I never like being slapped in the face, never mind by a naked monkey, and so when that slap occurs and I am not ready for it, I get flustered. “Oh my gosh, a monkey just hit me.” So even if there is some benefit to the monkey, say, to lead me to the pool boys, I am still thrown off by the mere existence of the monkey! I have to ask the monkey, “Why?” before I can follow him.

If I don’t feel the slap was justified, I have a hard time following. When I had to switch to Yahoo, I questioned what was wrong with the older version. I wasn’t hurting anyone by using it; the new version isn’t any more spectacular. But the slap of not buying anything in plastic bottles is justified to me, as difficult as it is to handle, because I know that my purchasing of plastic bottles is in some way damaging the greater existence of myself. I am willing to change and follow the monkey because I know that it is a meaningful change.

I guess what I am trying to say is that change is like a naked monkey: you can’t get too distracted by it, but you can’t forget about it completely. My proposal for us Gusties is to not be too quick to attack the naked ape and at the same time to not be too quick to follow him. Change is good when we can see the greater effect on ourselves and our world, but sometimes this isn’t always visible.