M. C. Escher, Metamorphosis II, 1940, detail.
Change isn’t always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl – Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like – Lao Tzu
The Change Remains the Same
This week I had the great good fortune to attend the Curriculum Leaders’ Away Day. Regrettably not in a converted monastery in Umbria, but in more local surroundings, where the biscuits were digestible and the conversations illuminating. Mind you, on your Director’s trusty bicycle it took nearly as long to get there as it would have to reach the green heart of Italy. But this is beside the point. One of the ideas my illustrious colleagues explored was ‘change’; how we plan it, manage it, lead it, and, occasionally, just about survive it. It’s a well-worn educational topic, I know, but one that stubbornly refuses to stay still long enough to become passé. Like trying to construct the movable feasts of next year’s timetable whilst at the same time Heraclitus is constantly whispering in your ear that the only constant in life is change. That’s Greek philosophers for you, I guess.
Change is, of course, both the most ordinary and perhaps the most unsettling thing about being alive. It’s the business not just of schools, but of families, friendships, workplaces, and nations. It’s our constant companion and our most persistent source of discomfort. You think you’re living through a familiar day and then you realise something essential has shifted: a face is missing, a rhythm is broken, and a certainty no longer feels secure. We’ve all, no doubt, been there.
And yet, for all our awareness of change, we remain deeply attached to permanence. We hoard it in rituals, habits, names, logos, and playlists to name but several of our bulwarks against the unsettling nature of change. Institutions take comfort in continuity, sometimes mistaking it for wisdom. This isn’t necessarily a fault. As Iain McGilchrist reminds us, the left hemisphere of the brain seeks structure and control; it tries to fix reality in place. And that propensity has its (limited but useful) place. But the right hemisphere, being more open to ambiguity and unfolding process, understands what Heraclitus knew long ago: the world is not a static object. “It is not a thing,” McGilchrist writes, “but a process.” Forms arise and dissolve. What matters is not to resist the flow of the river you can never step into twice, but to learn how to travel with it; with attention and grace.
Nevertheless, the paradox of Theseus’ Ship still haunts us: if you replace a vessel part by part, is it still the same ship? If a school, a business, or a friendship changes every one of its components; people, priorities, practices, does the essence endure? What remains, when everything else is in flux?
In a recent reflection, Bishop Philip North suggested that when it comes to lasting change, “good ideas aren’t enough.” Ideas matter, yes. But “it is relationships which change the world.” He notes that the most effective governments, schools, churches and teams don’t just share a vision, they share a commitment to one another. Change takes root when it is not merely project-based, but person-centred. When people feel seen, trusted, and heard, as he says, “even in the busiest team, time spent attending to each other and simply listening is never time wasted.”
There’s something quietly radical in that. It reorients the whole project of change away from strategy documents and toward the community. It reminds us that transformation is not enacted by policies alone, but by people, complex, flawed, brilliant, and in your Director’s case, foolish people, all bound together not only by shared goals but by shared care. It is in these deep, durable relationships forged over coffee, through conflict, in the unglamorous daily business of listening, that real change begins. Not in the abstract, but in the particular.
Literature, we should not be surprised to learn, has always understood this. Long before strategy documents and leadership Google Slides, great stories grappled with the messy, vital business of change.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for instance, isn’t just a collection of fantastical transformations; men into beasts, women into trees, gods into swans. It’s a profound exploration of how change is inextricably linked to relationships, to love and loss, to envy and grief, to cruelty and forgiveness. Think of Apollo’s relentless pursuit of Daphne, which leads to her transformation into a laurel tree; a desperate act of self-preservation, forced by an unwanted relationship. Or the tragic self-love of Narcissus, leading to his fatal gaze and transformation into a flower. Ovid shows us that change isn’t a solitary act; it’s often a consequence, a reaction, a blossoming or a fracturing born from our connections to others. The form may shift, but the relational dynamics often persist, or indeed, drive the metamorphosis itself.
And then there’s Shakespeare, who understood that character is not a static state, but a dynamic process, shaped by internal currents and the relentless pressures of interaction. Lear only truly begins to see himself and the world clearly through Cordelia’s silent, profound love and his daughters’ monstrous ingratitude. Lear’s transformation from an arrogant king to a vulnerable man is forged in the fires of fractured family bonds. Prospero, in The Tempest, the ultimate master of illusion and control, doesn’t just relinquish his magic on a whim; he does so for Miranda’s future, for the restoration of order and connection, choosing human relationship over absolute power. Even the famous tyrants like Macbeth and Richard III are not self-made monsters; their horrifying transformations are co-authored by ambition, fear, and the manipulative whispers (and eventually, the resistance) of those around them. Shakespeare reminds us that our personal transformations are almost always a communal enterprise, a dance of influence and reaction.
And whilst we’re on the subject…consider the constant, incremental shifts in Jane Austen’s characters as they navigate social strictures and personal revelations, their growth driven by encounters and conversations. Think of the sweeping societal changes depicted in George Eliot or Charles Dickens, where personal fates are inextricably entwined with the shifting tides of industrialisation, poverty, and reform. Or even the quiet, internal transformations explored by Virginia Woolf, where a single day can encompass an entire lifetime of shifting perceptions and emotional landscapes, often sparked by a seemingly minor interaction or observation. Literature, in its myriad forms, continually reminds us that change is not just a strategic imperative but a fundamental human experience, deeply embedded in our relationships, our societies, and our very consciousness. It’s the constant, unfolding narrative of being alive.
Of course, some transformations we choose whilst others choose us; sudden loss, a shift in team dynamics, a culture that quietly turns. In such moments, the temptation is to reach for what once was or to rush into what might be. But real change is not linear. It stumbles. It loops, doubts, and surprises. As I was reminded on the Away Day, the most enduring change often looks nothing like the implementation timeline. It lives in the small, often unnoticed acts of renewal: a difficult conversation handled well, a team rediscovering trust, a moment of vulnerability met with generosity.
And that’s perhaps where Philip North’s insight lands with such weight: that whilst we may try to build change through ideas and strategies, it’s relationships that truly do the building. “When small groups of people share not just a vision but a sustained commitment to each other,” he writes, “anything can happen.”
There is deep hope in that. Hope that we are not doomed to repeat the same cycles because we are not the same selves. Hope that through attention and effort, we can soften, deepen, or realign. And that teams can mend, individuals can reawaken and communities can renew. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d, as one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known characters says whilst talking about the ultimate change.
People, in your Director’s experience, are, thankfully, wonderfully complex. We change our minds. We soften. We harden. We revise. We grumble. We get excited. We resist. We adapt. We forget why we were ever so certain to begin with. There’s something profoundly human in that fluidity, that capacity for internal metamorphosis. Something deeply hopeful.
Whether in schools, offices, homes or hearts, change is seldom confined to the neat ends of chapters. As the academic year winds toward its close, we are, once more, in that particular period of flux common to most schools at this time. Year 11 and Year 13 have left their loud shadows in the corridors along with all those that went before. Room allocations shift like tectonic plates beneath us and even the most sacred departmental spaces must now pack up and move on. The new timetables will perhaps soon arrive and maybe new class lists, full of names we might even come to know by heart, each carrying the promise of new narratives. We prepare for endings and beginnings. Again.
And I suppose that’s precisely the point. Not that we ever truly master change, but that we learn to join its dance with greater grace. Not that we ever definitively arrive, but that we keep going with humour, humility, and, yes, the occasional muttered sigh about (insert the latest initiative).
If the soul of a school lies not in its bricks or systems but in its relationships, then perhaps our task is not to preserve it unchanged, but to keep it alive. Like the river, like the ship, and, whisper it quietly with Heraclitus, like ourselves.
Until next time, Happy Reading/Changing!
TPQ #2
If almost every cell in your body has been replaced over the past decade, are you still you? (Thorniness level out of 10? 3.24)
Those pesky biologists suggest that most of our cells are renewed every 7 to 10 years, some in only days, others more slowly. So if you feel like a different person than you did a decade ago, that’s not just a metaphor, it’s metabolism. But if your matter changes, your memories fade, and your views shift, what, if anything, remains? Is personal identity something we carry, something we construct, or something we narrate until the story runs out..?