I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that likes change.
Sure, certain unfavorable circumstances encourage people to make life-changing decisions. But as a rule, change makes people uncomfortable.
It’s no different for me. After all, I was the girl that wrote a note to the dishwasher when we got a new one. When my dad wanted to switch out my cheap bed frame with a much nicer wooden one, I decided to lie on the mattress so that he couldn’t take it off of the bed frame. Of course this didn’t work out too well and he pulled the mattress off of the box spring with me on top of it. I am the girl that cried whenever we got a new car and the girl that got unreasonably angry when we didn’t go to the place we usually went to see Fourth of July fireworks.
But I’m also the girl who decided to switch out of my K-12th grade charter school and go to the regular public high school. I’m also the girl that decided to attend a college hours away from everything and everyone I know. I’m the girl that decided to cut fourteen inches off of my hair despite liking it long.
None of these decisions were easy but I knew that for me, they were the right decisions.
It is so important to travel out of our comfort zones in order to stretch our experiences to live a much more fulfilling life.
Different changes can impact people’s lives in ways they don’t expect. It’s easy to see how a new dishwasher or car would better serve the purpose the old one was supposed to serve. It’s harder to realize just how much these things can change our lives. If my family had never gotten a new car, we never would have gone off-road driving. I never would have been to North Carolina, never would have driven on trails with strangers, never had the conviction that I could drive any stick shift car in the world.
If my family had never gotten a new car, I probably would not be writing this now in a hotel close to the trails we’re driving on tomorrow.
I switched schools to make new friends. I expected to be able to make friends with people that lived in my community that I never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. And for a while that was true and I was happy. And then it turned into something even more. One of my friends introduced me to one of her friends in another state. As I became friends with him, he introduced me to one of his friends in another country. I became friends with her and she introduced me to a whole community of people across the world I know I couldn’t have met any other way. As I’ve introduced other friends into this group I know none of this could have possibly happened if I hadn’t switched schools.
I chose a far-away college knowing I would have many opportunities that suited my interests better than a lot of the schools near me. What I didn’t expect was to get involved so early. Without choosing a school six hours away from where I live, I know for a fact I would not be writing this article right now because it was through this school that I learned I could even write for the Odyssey.
Seeking out change opens up your life to many other possibilities, none of which would be possible otherwise.
If you spend your life following the same routine every day and only ever choose the same restaurants, you do not open up your life to much enrichment.
Simply by choosing a different route to get to work sometimes, you can discover roads you didn’t ever know existed. Maybe you’ll find your new favorite restaurant down one of these roads. Or your child’s new favorite park.
Change is good. It’s human. Before humans started domesticating plants and animals, we were nomadic. We changed up where we lived almost every day. We are used to change, and though we are scared of it, it opens us up to many opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have.
So why are you scared of change?
