I have a love-hate relationship with change.
I think many people do.
It’s so strange. One would think that change is such an inevitable part of life–pretty much the material life itself is made of–that we should be used to it and take it as something absolutely natural. Yet we keep resisting. We keep letting it throw us off track.
Everything in this world is about change. Morning changes to daytime, and then to nighttime. Days of the week change. Months. Seasons.
Our bodies change. Our minds. Our feelings. Our habits. Sometimes, it happens slowly and gradually, and sometimes we feel like we blinked and the world turned upside down.
There are changes we look forward to, and changes we fear. Even though we realize time never stands still, we find ourselves caught off guard looking in the mirror and noticing the first wrinkles, or stray gray hairs.
And then your favorite coffee shop closes down, and a new place opens instead. Another change that causes discomfort. You can live with that, of course, but you keep looking back and thinking how different your life used to be with or without those seemingly insignificant things.
My generation has witnessed probably the most drastic change ever. Personally, I come from a place that was very different from the rest of the world, so it hit me even harder. I was born and raised in a country that doesn’t exist anymore, so I witnessed a whole world collapse before my eyes before I was even a teen.
Things kept changing at lightning speed. Later on, I moved to a different country. Learned a new language. My family fell apart. Fast forward a few years–I built a new family.
I’ve lost people I loved. I’ve made new friends and learned new skills. Fell in love again, and brought a new life into this world.
I should be immune to change by now.
But I’m not.
This year brings a whole lot of change into my life. While my youngest son starts daycare, my eldest graduates from high school, learns to drive, and plans to leave in a few months to study abroad. I’m equally excited and terrified.
Over the years, I’ve learned to adapt and adjust to pretty much anything. If I was to pack up tomorrow and move to another place–house, city, country, continent–I know I’m capable of doing that. I’ll manage.
Will it be easy? Absolutely not.
A few years ago, writing books was a dream of mine. A life-long dream. Something that never changed over all those years in the crazy whirlwind of my life.
Today, I have several books published–in a foreign language–and I keep being hard on myself for not writing and publishing more. I’m always impatient. Always eager to do more, learn more, achieve more.
And at the same time, I’m afraid of change. If I’m fully honest with myself, more often than I’d like to, I want to freeze the time. I want to press pause. Especially when it comes to thinking of the day (just a few months away) when my son gets on a plane and heads towards his new life.
How is it even possible, I wonder? To look forward to change, to growth and development, at the same time wanting to hide in a corner–in a cozy comfort zone–and being anxious about what tomorrow brings?
My little son plays a game and gets frustrated when he can’t get it right. I tell him, “It’s okay. You’re learning. That’s the whole point of it. That’s the fun part. If everything was easy, it would be boring.”
And at the same time, I think–how often do we as adults realize that? Can we even imagine what life would be like if nothing was ever changing? If we were stuck in a moment, like a mosquito trapped forever in a piece of amber?
In the third book of my trilogy, my main character ends up in a world where there’s always sunset. It’s a beautiful, idyllic little place. But after a while, she finds herself depressed, hating sunsets, and keeping the curtains closed because she doesn’t want to look out the window anymore.
Would I want to be in her place, I ask myself? Most certainly not.
As painful and uncomfortable as it is, change is something that fuels this life. Change is, at the end of the day, the only thing that makes sense.
The question is, how do we make peace with it?
Author Elena Carter 