Gradualness (huh?)

I was cleaning yesterday and started vacuuming my bedroom carpet. I've been a little neglectful of this part of housework for a while. Lotsa dog hair. I started vacuuming and I noticed it wasn't sucking up a whole lot. So I opened it up and rediscovered that there is a filter that needs to be cleaned. The note that tells you to clean the filter every six months was covered with dust. So I wiped it off and realized that one, I hadn't seen that note for years and two, holy shit the filter had literally five inches of dog hair and compressed dust caked over it so you wouldn't know that the filter was even there. Of course you wouldn't know that it was there because the note telling you about the filter was covered in dust. So I cleaned the filter and put it back in, turned on the machine and it worked great. Then it hit me. I realized that over a period of time the machine was sucking up dust less and less efficiently, but the change was so gradual I didn't notice for a long time. I did notice when it got real bad, and that is when I took action to try to figure out why.

You have probably figured out by now where I'm going with this story. Our lives change all the time. Our relationships, health, actions, and even thought processes change gradually over time. But most often it is such a slow process that we don't notice until something demands our attention. Good or bad. For example, a longtime relationship is usually in constant flux, even though we may not see it until something happens and all of the sudden wow, I changed or you changed or we both changed. Hopefully when you or me change it is good for us.
But.... but....sometimes not. When that happens it is time to re-evaluate the relationship. Can it go forward? Can it survive a supposedly sudden change? In retrospect it was really a change that evolved over time. Like a glacier, we don't notice it moving, but it does. We notice when it leaves big gouges in the ground. So like the glacier a change can leave a big gouge in our heart. It hurts and is uncomfortable and is stressing us out enormously. It can become absolutely unbearable.

So what do we do with this gradual change in our lives? How do we recognize the gradual change in everything? Sometimes we take action for good or bad. Sometimes we do nothing, even inaction can influence change. I don’t have any good answers. Nothing is as simple as we would like and nothing is as complicated as we think. Life is. Life does. Life will always be. Maybe we have developed some wisdom over the years we can apply to the gradual rhythm of life. We can’t really see the glacier move. We can only operate with the information we have and try our best. The phrase "time marches on" is so true, we can't stop the clock; we can't go back and gently nudge our past selves into a more logical action or healthier living. We can only try to deal with what is, and hopefully, use some of that accumulated wisdom we obtained ever so gradually.