If you look at your life today and then reflect back to 10 years ago, three years ago, even one year ago, one common thread will be that not much is the same. Everyone is older. Not everyone who was once here is still here. There are new jobs, new homes, new loved ones, new wrinkles and maybe even a new belt notch or two. We look different and in just a short time frame, even the world itself looks drastically different. A lot has changed.
Heraclutus described it well when he said, “There is nothing permanent except change.” As hard as it can be to accept, resisting it won’t prevent it from happening. Even though we know this, change can still be a very ugly word for most people, myself included at times.
I was 13 years old when my parents placed a ‘for sale’ sign on the front yard of the only home I had ever known. I remember being so angry about the sign that I yanked it out of the ground and hid it behind our shed in hopes I could somehow prevent what was about to happen.
The truth was I loved my home, my bedroom, my neighbourhood, the friends around me, and the predictable comfort of the routine my life was in. I didn’t want a different home. I didn’t care if it was bigger or better. I didn’t want change. I wanted everything to stay the same, instead.
When we moved, I learned to adapt to new surroundings and I eventually came to love the new home. Then we moved again, and once again, I adapted and enjoyed it. By the time I graduated high school, I was ready to move into a university home, and then again to Halifax to get a second degree. I have no doubt these transitions were easier for me because of my previous moving experiences. We need the preparation, growth and skills that change offers us in order to be able to cope with an ever-changing future.
Less than a year ago, we moved our family to a new home in the country and my oldest son experienced similar emotions I faced when I first moved. Now that we’ve had some time in our new place, he has discovered that the change wasn’t nearly as bad as he anticipated. In fact, to my relief, he has come to really enjoy it.
Sometimes change winds up being even better than things were before it. Sometimes the opposite is true. Regardless, in order to discover peace and happiness amidst it all, we need to learn how to adjust to the difference each day brings. The challenge is we don’t always get to choose the circumstances. The good news though, is that we do always get to choose our reaction to them.
It is an absolute guarantee that the way our lives are in this moment, will not be the way our lives are forever. As difficult as that can be, I think it can be equally beautiful. It all depends on how we choose to look at it. What if we equated it with growth? Preparation? Evolution? Even transformation?
When we hear or see that change is coming, rather than being resistant and fearful, what if we could choose to view it in a way that allows us to embrace it instead. Maybe this would actually make the entire experience a positive one rather than a painful one. A speaker I heard the other day said, “Our perspective can either be our prison or our passport.” I have no doubt he is right.
As we all look at what seems to be a very difficult change in our world, we all have a choice to make. We can decide it’s too awful to look at, shrink back and remain overwhelmed by it all, or we can decide to adapt, grow, look for the silver lining, find the good and find a way to allow the change to change us for the better. Both are hard, but only one makes the changes up ahead a little easier to face. The change may not be up to us, but the choice we have about it always is.
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This is a monthly opinion piece; Alison Brown is a Walkerton native now living in Listowel, where she is a business owner, mother and published author.
