Over time

It doesn't take much of a review of language to realize that language changes all the time.  But it is hard for most people to see a change in language as it is happening.  It is easy to see that modern English has changed radically from the extant Anglo-Saxon records.  And, it is easy to recognize a huge difference in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and modern English.  Even the English of Shakespeare is so different from modern English that many teachers require students to have a modern English version of the text if they decide to read one of his plays.  But, modern language is in flux too.

Think, for example, of the past tense of the verb show (showed).  Well, it hasn't always been showed.  It was an irregular past tense at one time (shew).  And the past participle form (shown) was also an irregular form.  It followed the same  pattern in its 3 principle parts as draw, drew, drawn.  Some people still use shown with the auxiliary verb have/has/had, but for the most part, people these days use the regular verb pattern for the principal parts, show, showed, showed.  I have even heard English teachers who teach shown as the form to use in the perfect tense use showed in a setting when not teaching in their classrooms.  The verb changed during my own lifetime.

So has the verb dive. when I was growing up, the past tense was dove, the past participle was diven.  Although I hear dove as the past tense on occasion, I never hear diven and haven't for some time.  Now the verb is learned and even taught in many places as dive, dived, dived.  And that has occurred in my lifetime.  Strike, struck, stricken, has changed to strike, struck, struck.  And, plead, pled, pled, has changed to plead, pleaded, pleaded, the regular verb forms. The last two have changed in the last 30 years.

I see the same kind of changes taking place as the years go by in my own life as those that have happened in language. I can see great changes in me from the time I was a teenager.  A little time spent not long ago with a friend and former basketball teammate from high school showed me just how great those changes have been.  I can see a lot of change,too, from the decade of my 20s in several major areas of life.  And a number of years later, I can point to two very great events that happened to me, and see my life before those events, then after those events, and view the change.

Change is part of living.  Even great changes.  And as far as those two events go, I wish the first had not occurred and want the second to have different resolution (I have faith here).  I have had to work their outcomes thus far into my current way reasoning.  That has led to a new way of thinking about change and an altered belief system.  I am comfortable in my own skin still, as I always have been, even though my skin is a different hue now.  And I fully expect the next 20 years to bring a few last changes to my beliefs before settling down to enjoy the last few minutes of the 4th quarter.