Change

Change

I’ve been thinking about change lately and how I deal with it. It’s strange how “change” has become a regular part of my life.

I thought back to my childhood, to a time when I thought change was rare. I tended to believe that things would always go on the way they were. For example: each year I thought summer would last forever, that my friends would be with me forever, that we’d always live where we lived.

That didn’t happen, of course. Summer always turned to autumn, my friends moved away and we shifted to a new house on the other side of town. To a child with no control over life, any kind of change was devastating. I’d cry and grieve for months. I never wanted anything to change, and of course everything did. I couldn’t handle it at all.

I was still a bit like that as an adult. I’d cling to what was comfortable and familiar – even if it was bad. I feared change so much that I’d stay within whatever boundaries I’d set for myself. Like a man clinging to his sinking boat, I would not let go of the rail. No, I’d sit on the bottom of the ocean with the vessel that was familiar, and mourn the loss of the sunlight on the surface.

This new entity that is me, has transformed. Change flows through me and around me all the time. It has become the one constant in my life. My life is not chaotic, though. Far from it. Having embraced change, I have a new sense of inner peace. Change itself has become familiar. Dealing with it has become natural.

It’s an acceptance from within. I have learned that nothing stays the same and I have learned to embrace that fact.

Change can be a challenge, but it also brings new possibilities. All this has come from a change of perspective, a decision to look at life a different way. Instead of change being the big black monster that could take my life away, it has become the wind that stirs the imagination, the current that carries me from one learning experience to another.

Through all this I have learnt a very valuable lesson: the more things change around me, the more I am myself.