Make the Change

Posted by yseult on Mar 15, 2010 in Soulfood, The Odd Philosophical Question | 5 comments

What is worse…? Daring too much or not daring enough?

There probably isn’t anybody in this world who doesn’t dream about changing something in their lives. It can be as small as finally finding a better way to deal with clutter and go as big as becoming a better human being.

Dream about it… talk about it… think about it and paint the future ‘changed’ state in a way that is appealing.

A lot of steps can make up what eventually can become a scary thing: change. If we could see into the future and only have a clear view of what this change can bring into our life… if we just could have some kind of positive reassurance that we are doing the right thing… yes, that would make it all so much easier. But the truly scary part about change isn’t so much the uncertainty, it’s the going out and making it happen part that is so hard. So hard in fact that in numerous situations, we prefer to play it safe. Putting ourselves out there in the world, is a hard gamble. Exposing who we are, what we wish for, running the constant danger of being rejected, of finding doubt where we need assurance and relief, it certainly isn’t something that will bring power or strength. Or so it would seem.

But if we try to look at it from another direction, then maybe change can be the one thing that saves us from becoming what we never wanted. (…) Look at a child that learns to walk. There isn’t anything particular running through their mind when they take the smallest, but surely one of the most important steps of their lives: the first one.
A first step always holds a promise. For the toddler it holds a whole life full of danger, full of injury, full of pain, but also full of discovery, fully of phantasy, full of exhilarating sensations, full of … new.

So many occasions come and go, but each and every one of them are a possibility to take a step. A new step, the next step, a faltering one, an assured one. And of course it is a dangerous thing. While toddlers run into a lot of physical dangers while starting their path in this world, as grown ups the pain becomes more hidden, more subtle and so much more devastating. Because we’re supposed to just ‘deal with it’, just ‘get on with it’. Because in a society that only considers a person in terms of performance and buying power, there is no space for ‘not dealing’ and ‘not getting on with it’. Through these eyes, only losers can’t deal with rejection, only underachievers dwell on the bad and the fear.

Reality obviously has a different face. It talks of the hard moments when you don’t know the direction for that first path. When you have the impression of being in a wrong path, but don’t know how to turn back. It talks of uncertainty and of failure. Of never feeling good enough, of never being enough.

Popular belief suggests that knowing what you want is the first step. But that also suggests that you know where to go.

Maybe knowing what you don’t want (such as persisting in a fearful state of mind or an undecided one for instance) is the better way to go. And sometimes it will take a lot of uncertain steps, steps that might seem wrong or out of place or useless to achieve that long sought after change that we wish for and dream about. Change in most cases doesn’t come with a label and it certainly doesn’t come in one giant heap. It takes a first step. And that first step, try to take it without thinking. Just as the child takes that first step into a new and larger world full of wonders and who know what could happen once the first one is done?