As I was at work tonight putting the eight-year-old to bed, he asked me why Mommy and Daddy can't get back together. Telling him that Daddy has another woman in the city wouldn't be appropriate, so I just told him that they didn't get along the way married people need to be able to. He began plotting out a way to ask his parents to "give it one more try," and told me that he thought that "if Daddy could find it in his heart" to go to a therapist, move back in, just try harder, that things would work out and they could be together. He asked me what I did when my mother died and my father was my only parent. I told him that there really wasn't anything I could do, because I knew that the possibility of my mother being alive again wasn't there. There was nothing I could do to change it.
This got me thinking about change. Why is change such a horrible thing? Even when we know something isn't right for us, even when we know that things need to change, it's almost impossible to implement it. And that's just the changes that we're in control of. What about the ones that just happen whether we want them to or not? Life sometimes washes over you like a series of waves in the ocean... no matter how hard or how many times you try to stand up, they keep knocking you down. People fight against change even if it's what's best for them.
In my last relationship I fought against the end that I knew was inevitable just because I was deathly afraid of how life would be if it was different. Of course it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, as I knew it would. In my current relationship, we're both fighting against an unavoidable course that life is taking, both mine and his. It is difficult to say that at this juncture it makes more sense to get some distance and if we're meant to be together we will be.
As human beings we get attached- to people, routines, ideas, places- and the inexorable truth is that most, if not all, of these things will change at some point. Relationships end, lifestyles become inconvenient, people relocate. Why should it be any more difficult to change a habit or way of life than it is to change our minds?
Because we're afraid. If we weren't afraid- of hurting someone, of being alone, of new places, of the unknown- change would be just another part of life.
I do hope that someday I gain the courage and wisdom to be able to accept change, to know when things must change, and to be able to make the changes that I need to.
a wise man once told me ''If you give a man a fish, you can feed him for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, you can feed him for a life time'' i dont know but for some reason when i read this post this morning that was the only thing that really came to my mind. Change is hard to deal with even if you can benefit from it later on down the road. People like to stick to "what works" for them like the old saying goes ''if it aint broke dont fix it'' and i think people tend to go by that in many aspects of their lives. I thank you for writing this blog today because you just gave me the strenght to make to necessary changes i need in my life. Thank you wordsmith
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