Change
More than a few things lately have me thinking about change.
In my own life … the last year in particular, I changed:
… cities, moving from VA to New York, and
… relationships, going from single to married, and
married to single (nearly as quickly), and
… my hair changed from blonde to red to brown, and
… I changed apartments (twice) and jobs (3 times – ouch!), and
… went from regular coke to diet coke.
We accept the basic truth that change happens all around us every day; we just don’t always see it happening in ourselves. Or want to see it.
I’ve met more than a few people who have uttered the words, “I can’t change.” To be honest, I bet I say those same words as often as I hear them.
There are many days, down to specific moments, where I’ve wished I could stop time. Stop time, so that I could stay the person I was in that particular place. And, those times aren’t an album full of the great moments of my life—many of them are the most painful ones.
Sometimes it’s been easier to want to hold onto a painful moment, be it a bad relationship, a rundown apartment on a bad street, or a dissatisfying job. There’s so much more to be feared in what could happen outside that status quo, where the pain is at least familiar. Superhuman leaps or baby steps towards new people or places could make things worse.
But, we don’t always have the choice to not change. I’ve spent the last year in constant change, in search of something to hold onto and unwilling to slow down long enough to get over all the fears I have.
Change—it forces itself in. It’s not always dramatic. We don’t wake up fully transformed into new, better, more complete people. We don’t wake up to be sad, traumatized, or more fearful people either. Change is smaller than that. It’s the kind of thing that sometimes we can’t even see ourselves, not at first, not unless we fess-up and look really close, which thank God we almost never do.
When it happens and when it’s realized, it feels obvious. And, once again, I try to stand really still bargaining with time, fate, serendipity, and God. Hoping to hold onto it this time, because I don’t want to have to change again.