Change Is The Only Game In Town

Change…The Only Game in Town.

Most people don't like change.

We want things to stay the same. We want our relationships, our health, our jobs, our homes, our routines—and our lives—to remain familiar and predictable. When something changes unexpectedly, our first response is often resistance. We think, I don't want this to change. I want things to go back to the way they were.

But let's consider something.

Suppose you were given exactly what you asked for.

You don't want things to change? Fine. Let's freeze time.

From this moment forward, nothing in your life will ever change. Every day will be exactly like the day before and exactly like the day after. Your relationships will never evolve. Your circumstances will never be different. You will never have another novel thought or idea. You will do exactly the same things, in exactly the same way, every day, for the rest of your life.

Nothing will surprise you.

Nothing new will ever happen.

Nothing will ever be lost—but nothing will ever be gained either.

Is that what you want?

I suspect almost everyone would say no.

And that's the paradox.

We don't actually want life to remain unchanged. We want the changes we like and we want to avoid the changes we don't like.

We want our children to grow—but not grow away from us.

We want to grow older—but we don't want our bodies to change.

We want new experiences—but we don't want to lose the familiar ones.

We want relationships to deepen—but we don't want them to evolve in ways we didn't anticipate.

We want life to change, just not that way.

But life doesn't work that way.

Everything is changing, all the time.

The universe itself is in motion. Our bodies are changing. Our thoughts are changing. Our emotions are changing. Our relationships are changing. Circumstances are changing. Even the person you were five minutes ago no longer exists in exactly the same form.

There is no such thing as stagnation.

Change isn't something that occasionally happens to us.

Change is the only game in town.

And if change is inevitable, then resisting it is ultimately an exercise in futility.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't take action. It doesn't mean that we should become passive or indifferent. We can make choices. We can influence circumstances. We can work toward the life we want.

But there is a profound difference between participating in life and trying to control life.

We can steer the boat without controlling the river.

Much of our suffering comes from confusing the two.

We try to hold on to what is already changing. We try to make permanent what was never meant to be permanent. We mentally argue with reality, telling it that something shouldn't be happening, shouldn't be ending, shouldn't be different.

But reality doesn't negotiate.

Change keeps moving.

I sometimes think of life as an amusement-park ride. Before the ride begins, there is usually a warning:

Keep your hands and feet inside the ride compartment at all times.

Why?

Because the ride is going to move in ways you cannot control. It will turn, drop, rise, accelerate and stop according to its own design. If you reach outside the compartment and try to grab onto something or interfere with the ride, you can get hurt.

Life is much the same.

The ride is already moving.

Our instinct is often to reach out and grab the controls—to hold on to what we like and push away what we don't. We want to slow down the parts we fear and stop the parts we don't want.

But perhaps the wiser response is to keep our hands and feet inside the ride.

Feel the turns.

Experience the drops.

Enjoy the moments when the ride rises.

And allow the ride to be the ride.

We don't have to like every change.

We don't have to understand every change.

And we certainly don't have to pretend that every change is pleasant.

But we can recognize something far more fundamental:

Change is not the problem. Our resistance to the inevitability of change is the problem.

When we stop demanding that life remain the way we want it to be, something interesting happens.

We become free to experience life as it actually is.

Not as it was.

Not as we think it should be.

Not as we wish it would remain.

But as it is—moment by moment, constantly changing.

The ride is moving.

It always has been.

And it always will.

©Michael Morris, MA