Opinion

Change is inevitable

June 30, 2018

Thinking back. Pondering life. How it was. How it is. How much you have been through. Who you were. And who you are now. How everything and anything could change in a split second. One thought, one notion, one piece of advice, one motive, and one decision can change a lot. One day you’re this and the other you’re that. One day you’re on top of the world and the other you’re at rock bottom. How much can we take and how much are we actually able to adjust to? How much is a human being really designed to handle? How much capacity do we actually have before we crack, before we go insane and mad? When can we let ourselves just “be” without controlling our emotions and keeping them in? When is it crucial to do so?

They say: “To really Live you have to learn to Ignore”, i.e. to overlook things, situations, bits and pieces, and all the small matters especially those that are only there to cause noise. As if it were easy to do so, as if our minds were these obedient machines that would just do what we tell them and want them to do. I have learned, the hard way I must say, by observing myself and others going through change.

Let me first clearly differentiate: there is change that we have chosen “mostly a good change” and change that happens to us by force or let me say by fate. The impact of change that we have chosen is somewhat manageable; after all, we have chosen it, and our mind is expecting it and we have had time to absorb the fact that we will go from one place to another in life.

Like for example, graduating from one level to another, changing from one job to another, going from being single to married; basically going from one stage to the next in life. Your mind has adjusted prior to the actual occurrence of all these changes, which is what makes it less hard and more endurable. You are expecting change; you are somewhat ready for it.

It’s the other kind that breaks you into pieces, that shatters your life, that just puts you in this whole new surrounding and in order to live, to go on with life, you have to adapt. There is no warning, no heads up, nothing, just something that changed in a flash, and you, my dear, have to live with that fact. You are standing there in the center of your life just as you were right before all of this happened; you were just normally living your life. And now, all of a sudden, you have to work so hard to overcome this.

Sometimes, many times actually, when these changes happen, we ask ourselves a continuous unending series of “WH” questions: “Why did this happen?” “Why did it happen to me?” “Why am I going through this?” “What am I supposed to learn?” “How will I overcome this?” “How long will this last?” and so on.

In most cases, if not all, you do not find solid answers. No matter how hard you look for them, you most probably will come back with nothing. At least, nothing that will make you feel any better at that moment. Nothing that will convince you and make sense to you. You know why? Because in that exact moment, after a change has just happened, I mean that sudden unwanted change, you are in shock and a disappointed state of mind, where you tend to push away any reason that might be slightly logical.

Nevertheless, many times, you will not find a reason. You cannot actually see it. Our problem is that we tend to think that we, somewhat, know why most things happen to us; when in fact we most likely create our own reasons and simply surrender to live with them. We have to fully digest and understand that in many situations we are not meant to know the “why,” and that we should not worry about it.

I was just watching episode 17 of Grey’s Anatomy (season 14) the other day and the episode ended with, the coincidence blew my mind, a quote saying: “Some things... just happen... And we don’t get to know WHY.”

However, since I’ve always chosen to believe that everything happens for a reason, it becomes very difficult sometimes when I don’t actually see the reason or even understand the lesson behind it, especially in cases when change didn’t happen as I was hoping for, meaning that it happened for the worse. Thus, when my mind fails me, does not persuade me with an explanation, I get frustrated and desperate, and again ask why I was meant to be involved in this. I lose my temper and just go through days not noticing bits and parts of life because I am not in my regular state of mind.

Having been through this, being constantly

concerned about the “why”, and reaching no conclusion, I have decided that I must believe that I do not need to know the reason. I do not need to find an explanation. I do not need anything. After an unwanted and unexpected change happens, I just need to be okay. Accept it. And go on with life. I need to shift all my focus, devote all my energy to working on myself mentally and emotionally, to better myself. To be stronger and tougher, I shall push myself to learn from that change and any other change that may occur. I have to deeply believe that everything does actually happen for a reason, but we do not always get to know what it is. After all, change is inevitable. That is how life goes. It is actually the natural flow of things, for them to be in constant motion.

According to another quote, also used on Grey’s Anatomy (you can tell that I am a huge fan), “Change. We don’t like it. We fear it, but we can’t stop it from coming. We either adapt to change or we get left behind. It hurts to grow, anybody who tells you it does not is lying, but here’s the truth, sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. And sometimes, oh, sometimes change is good.”

I’d like to leave it at this. See how I started at one point and ended at an exact opposite one, and how my tone was rigid in the start and as you go through the article, you notice it getting softer and softer. That is the magic of writing down your thoughts; it basically “ignites an entirely new dimension of consciousness”, which is a very interesting topic for a future article.

Haneen AlHumaidy


June 30, 2018
1574 views
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