Change Can Be Scary

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. - Anatole France

We are constantly changing people, mostly. There are some people who have stubbornly insisted on remaining the same day after day, year after year. But most of us grow and change. We aren’t the same people we were a decade ago, and acknowledging that can be a scary thing. One of the worst accusations a friend can make is “You’re changed”. You may try to deny it, but it’s probably true, even without you thinking about it.

It’s the unconscious changes that are the scariest, in my opinion, once you realize them, that is. So long they remain unknown, then how can you be scared? But once you’ve woken up to the fact that your life and your actions are now what you would have expected from who you were “back then”, the change is scary. “How did this happen?” “When did this happen?” “Why did this happen?” Why? Because you weren’t changing intentionally, so you changed as life wanted to shape you.

You’re going to change. It’s inevitable. You can spend a ton of time and energy in never changing, and that’s you’re choice, but things will just change around you instead. The question is, are you going to direct your change, manage it, make certain that you come out on the other side where you want to be? Or are you just going to let the winds of fate take you?

The second choice isn’t so bad, so long as you have enough inner strength to withstand the bad times, but most people who resign themselves to fate do so because they lack the inner strength to bother taking control of their own lives. Either option can be taken to extremes, of course. But are you now where you want to be? And if not, what are you going to do about it?

What’s scarier to you – the effort of making a change where you don’t know the outcome, or the thought of you being exactly like you are 5 or 10 years from now? Change can be scary, but being out of control of yourself can be scarier still.