In recent months, I’ve come to reluctantly realize that change is certain. The ‘now’ flies by us and before we know it we’re wondering, why are things are different? As humans, I believe we live and dwell in the past far too often. I found myself guilty of this many times, only to be led to the same dead end road of false expectation and disappointment. And that’s because I was afraid of change.
Through personal experience, coming back to school this time around was especially hard for me knowing a close friend of mine would not be coming back. I was dealing with a loss, and a huge sense of change that I was not otherwise used to. Things did not feel the same, and neither did I. Coming from such a close-knit high school and town, I never fathomed the idea of such an adjustment. I was unaware of the world that lied outside of my very own, naïve bubble. It wasn’t until now that I started realizing that people and feelings are temporary, the world is a huge, and sometimes scary place, and as individuals we must adapt. Coming back to school here without that person, I was reminded of this fearful yet inevitable sense of change. I looked back to the previous year and said to myself, “what’s different?” “why am I not as happy as I was”? “where did this person go?”But I soon realized everything was different; the people around me, my building, the weather, my roommate, relationships, thoughts, feelings and experiences were all altered in some way. And instead of disregarding that change, I realized I had to be open to it in order to survive.
I always imagined myself a year down the road and pictured myself in the same circumstances I was in, in that exact moment. Thoughts of myself in the future were falsified illusions of being there right now, as I was, right now. But what people don’t tell you is that we are always changing. We are a completely different person in that following year, being shaped by the new people, places, and knowledge that comes our way.
Instead of facing my back towards change I have learned to accept it with open arms. I’ve learned to never get too comfortable, and to realize every day is a new day. Change was certain—which scared me. But everything that was different, has made me who I am today, and where I am supposed to be. I now believe in focusing my time on that one second of ‘now’ by simply making the best of it.
Change may be unavoidable, but believing in it is a choice.