On Change

Funny how it seems that no matter how much you prepare for the changes in your life, you are never really ready. They just seem to happen so quickly, even when you know they are coming. With all of the months of preparation, the details and time consumed making everything ready you would think a person would be ready to consume the change - and yet, not. There is just as big and scary as if it jumped out of the blue.

Perhaps that is the nature of being. We like what we know, it is comfortable. Even the parts of our lives that are not quite wonderful are more comfortable than change. Change brings us to the realm of the unknown. We can visualize the value, the wonder, the joy in making the changes - but we must still walk into the void of the unknown, pass from what is here and now and tangible to get a shot at making that vision happen. And that, my friend, that is not comforting.

Although, I will admit, it can be exhilirating, particularly when the change is centered around you walking in to the main force. But when change means helping others move forward, while it is rewarding to help them grow, it also means a time when you will have to reconcile yourself and your life to this new absence. You rejoice in your part in helping those you love grow and expand. You celebrate their ability to learn to embrace change. And then you remind yourself that this talent for embracing change is something you yourself think is important. And now is a good time to embrace it yourself. Yet somehow, it still seems that it has come upon you so suddenly.

Change it seems is the agent that both sets us free and weighs us down. It has the capacity to cripple us with our fear of it, yet through it we grow the most. How can something that is just a natural part of the rhythm of life have faces that seem so opposed? To give and to take in the same breath - but I suppose in many ways that is exactly the nature of change. What is known becomes the past, forever altered in the way we live given the changes we adapt to.

So here's to change, change management and to finding the wonder and beauty in the opportunities that change brings to our lives.

Slainte!