People only change. That's all we do.
🦵🏽 SKILL CELLING: Enjoying change as an opportunity for renewal & awe via people we thought we already knew
Cynics love to complain about how people never change.
And yet, if you look around, it’s actually quite the opposite.
People only change. That's all we do. Hell, human skin cells replace themselves every seven to ten years. Imagine what kinds of crazy transformations happen with things like our personalities, thoughts, feelings, preferences and belief systems.
To quote one of my favorite punk rockers, change is not coming, it is here, and things are only going to get changier.
Think about the last time someone you loved was going through very big changes.
Did you ever feel resentment towards them? Did you ever get angry at someone because you wanted your old life or relationship back?
It’s surprisingly normal. People start to show up differently, and we can’t help but get upset.
Because all change is saying goodbye to something. It’s a death, and it happens all the time. We see a chapter in our interpersonal life closing, and we mourn.
And what sucks is, we discover within our grief all these depths of emotion that didn’t even realize were inside of us. Contempt, anger, spitefulness, morbidity, all these feelings bubble up to the surface when other people change without our permission.
God damn it, if only everyone would just retain their nature and preserve their identity in amber for my comfort.
It reminds me of an inspiring devotional book about spiritual recovery. Casey suggests that people come to enjoy change as an opportunity for renewal.
That passage always stuck with me. It’s an invitation to become happy in the acceptance of reality on reality’s terms.
Because we may not get our old relationship back exactly as it was before. We may have to mourn leaving that happy place. The person we first connected with years ago will almost certainly evolve into someone new.
And so, rather than trying to recapture something that is no longer available to us, better to stay future focused on what we want to become.
It’s perfectly human to feeling oppressed by change, but do we really want to grieve that for all eternity, or move on and live?
Time will bring change in abundance.
And our skin cells are only the beginning.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Wouldn’t you love to feel awed by someone you thought you knew completely?