Sparing Change

I will be the first to admit that I hate change. Personally, I believe that most of us, to some degree, hate change. While some of us cope with it better than others, I err on the side of trying to ignore change into nonexistence. Needless to say, it does not work for me. But, in this whirlwind year of post-grad, I have been learning not only to cope with change, but to look forward to all that it may bring. Almost two weeks ago, my oldest sister got married. She married the man of her dreams, her boyfriend of nearly ten years and, in what seemed to be only a few weeks, she bought a new place, set up her new home, and moved in with her new husband. This short period of time before her wedding day was filled with beautiful and treasurable new additions- a new brother, a new home to visit, a new life to admire, and a new union to wholeheartedly celebrate. But, it was also a time that I mourned because my oldest sister, my role model, my roommate of twenty-three years, and my best friend was moving out of our home. It was a lot of change to handle, especially for someone who unashamedly and admittedly hates change. But, as I learned to accept the inevitable, the unchangeable, I learned to be okay with change. Then, the unexpected happened: I learned to grow comfortable with change. So, why does change scare us so much? We hate change because it is unfamiliar- we have nothing to compare it to, nothing to judge it by, and we are uncertain of its outcomes. We also are uncomfortable with change because we grow comfortable and secure, instead, in our own perception of “normal”, in what we have created our own normal to be. But, when we begin to accept the inevitability of change, we also begin to open ourselves to all the opportunity that change will bring into our lives. As we grow more comfortable with change, as we begin to hate change less and less, we may begin to notice positive outcomes of change in our lives. You see, change is scary, but wholly necessary, because it shifts and sometimes altogether redefines our normal. But, in altering our sense of security, change causes us to accept and create new normals for ourselves. It allows us to adapt to different circumstances. Without change, we would never be challenged to thrive in newness, we may never grow to trust uncertainty, and we may never realize our potential beyond our own understanding. Change is good because it unlocks a growth we would never choose for ourselves- a growth that is uncomfortable, new, and incomparable, but a growth that is wholly necessary in order for us to experience new depths in all relationships and experiences in our lives.This change is good because it opens our eyes to an otherwise unseen world around us, a new order, an alternate way of life, or otherwise hidden opportunities. Change is good for us because it forces us to accept new normalcies for our lives, normalcies that take us in new directions and help us to uncover new meanings. If it were not for forceful and inevitable change in our lives, we would grow so accustomed to the normalcy of our lives that we would not look for or be interested in anything else. But, inevitable change shifts our focus and realigns our gaze to things, people, and experiences that we may not have looked to otherwise. Change causes us to adapt to creating new normalcies and to relying on the process of normalizing new things, new places, and new people. Change opens our eyes and our hearts to a world that encompasses vastly more than the parameters that hold our individually crafted sense of normalcy.Leo Tolstoy once said, “The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.” In wrapping my mind around this concept of change, I have thought of someone asking you, “Can you spare me some change?” When someone asks us this, we willingly, and usually unquestioningly, offer them the change they need- a few dimes, a nickel, a quarter. But what if we learned to spare change in our own lives? What if we learned to preserve it, to accept it, and to allow it to offer us all of the experiences, places, people, and things that we would not have been open to otherwise? What, then, would sparing change, embracing change, look like for each of us? Might we begin to make room in our lives to spare some change? And, might we allow that change to recreate new normalcies? I believe that we can. I believe that we can begin to grow comfortable and accepting of all the vastly different forms of change in our lives- the good, the bad, the enjoyable, the necessary. And, as we begin to accept change, I believe that we will grow to allow ourselves to adapt to new normalcies and to accept all the outcomes, good and bad, unexpected and expected, wholly beautiful and incomparable, that this change will bring us.