For most of us, change is the scariest thing of all

Here we are post-Halloween with all the princesses and zombies deep in sugar-shock. We may not have had the daylights scared out of us, but we did have to fiddle with the daylight, like some egomaniacal gods and goddesses, setting our clocks back, gaining back that hour someone took away last spring.

With that extra hour to muse, I got to thinking about what scares us and why we like to be scared by some things while avoiding others assiduously. The kids flock to haunted houses or in Duluth, to a huge haunted ship, scoffing if it's not scary enough, blustering to cover up how really scared they are.

Movies that get the pulse racing pull us right in: we get to be in the dark, terrified in the company of others and scream out loud without getting arrested. The Creature from the Black Lagoon did it for me as an imaginative, easily-frightened child. The Birds, Psycho, and The Shining followed later, setting a whole new standard, making The Creature, King Kong and other older films look clumsy, contrived and, well, just corny. As technology changed rapidly and we became more sophisticated consumers of terror, needing a more intense fix, filmmakers accommodated, allowing us to virtually experience on bigger and bigger screens having our homes invaded, our bodies snatched and our minds controlled by evil manipulators from across the universe or down the block. Disaster movies became magnified, working to top the quite real disasters happening out in the world.

The original Grimm fairy tales were a lot more gruesome than the Disneyfied versions, but adults had no compunction about reading them to very young children. Such terrorizing apparently lets us experience fear in a safe way while providing an outlet for intense emotions, not a bad idea up here on the Range where emotions are often so carefully tucked in. The adrenaline rush can give us an edge, mentally, physically and intuitively; perhaps that helps us feel more in control in our ordinary lives.

I’m not big on horror or disaster movies these days or those dark, psychological thrillers, probably because daily news is scary enough for me and I limit my consumption of that. I seek escapism in other forms, but what I find truly scary is how really, really slowly our human race seems to be evolving. I'd like to see us speed that up a bit, but then I've mentioned before that, on occasion, I can be the tiniest bit impatient.

Since evolving means changing, learning new information and new ways of operating, it makes sense that our fears kick in to resist and maintain the status quo. It is said that the hardest thing to change is a mind. Having struggled with my own, I can verify the truth of that. Remember light bulb jokes? How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change. A friend said recently that he’s all for change as long as he’s not the one who has to do it. I’d say he speaks for the way we all feel, at least some of the time.

Why is it so hard for us? When we are learning something new or attempting to change, we’re out of our comfort zone and can feel clumsy and embarrassed about doing it badly. We may be fearful about what's coming, uncomfortable with the uncertainty of an unknown outcome: better the devil you know.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote about change management in the Harvard Business Review, affirming many of my thoughts, including that loss of face is a factor. If we concede to the need for change, does that mean we have to admit that we were doing it wrong or thinking incorrectly before? Also, Kanter said that feeling pressured to change can bring up past resentments that sometimes go back generations and get in the way of cooperation today. Also, bottom line, change means more work when we have to relearn and think differently instead of operating on automatic pilot. We may just prefer our lazy mode.

I recently took part in the presentation at the Ely City Council study session about copper-sulfide mining. In the allotted hour, many people shared factual information and their personal concerns about the economic, environmental and social impacts of copper-sulfide mining in our area. Of course we’re hoping people in the audience, the council and watching on TV or reading the newspaper accounts will be open to learning more about the realities of sulfide mining. We are hoping minds will be changed.

So, who’s resisting change here? We all are. Those who were born here may want the hometown they grew up in, but all of us want the version of Ely that is near and dear to our hearts. Some hold fondly in memory the “good old days” when the mines were operating and mining companies supported local education with school supplies for the kids and cash for the building fund. Many chose to move here, as I did, for the clean air and water and proximity to wilderness. After living in urban environments for 21 years, I wanted to live in the more human scale of a small community which offered a quiet environment and dark nights with a minimum of light pollution. And I don't want it to change.

Our feelings about Ely are not unique. In his sixties, my dad moved to San Diego with his second wife and he said, “Like everyone else, we want to be the last ones to move in.”

I think we all would like to be able to return home at times, perhaps holding memories a bit more golden than the reality we lived. If we’re honest, most of us would admit there’s no way we'd want to relive junior high or high school. We like the idea of returning home for a bit as long as there's an escape hatch. Thanks to the climate, the black flies, the“end of the road”location and limited career opportunities, Ely has not been over-developed. It has remained unchanged in many ways, at least allowing the illusion of turning back time, and many do flock back for holidays and well-attended class reunions.

In comparison, my hometown of Crystal Lake, Illinois, had 5,000 people when I was six, 5,000 students in the elementary/middle school district by the time I was twenty-two and now has a population of 40,400. It exploded under the pressure of population and the convenience of commuter trains to Chicago and is completely unrecognizable. My hometown no longer exists.

And, of course, Ely has changed in many significant and positive ways and will continue to do so. I am ever hopeful that we can continue to evolve in our community relations, learning how to carry on conversations with each other even when we disagree, recognizing that we are more alike than different and valuing the part that each and every one of us play in our community.

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” If there’s one thing that folks up here know about, it’s survival. People here have a heritage of hard work and innovation in tough conditions. Today many others like myself work more than one job in order to stay, valuing what we have and knowing as we look into the throat of winter that we will survive and possibly even thrive.