There are some mornings where our eyes open so fast with excitement even without an alarm as we can’t wait another second for the day to start. And there are other days in which we just close our eyes, ignoring the alarm, and slightly frown wishing that time would just stop right there. In both, we react to some kind of a change that is about to happen. Sometimes we are ecstatic for the change to come, whereas other times we dread it. So change is an interesting thing and I would like to take this opportunity to examine the meaning of it in our lives.
First of all, change is what facilitates the flow of time. Echoing Jin’s previous post on time, time seems relative to everyone, to every situation. When we are traveling Europe for the first time, time seems to pass by so fast, but in a boring lecture that you physically cannot get yourself to focus, a minute feels like an hour. I believe that the difference lies in the existence of change in our situations. When we travel, talk with friends, watch a movie or engage in any other activity that we consider “fun,” we are experiencing the situation for the first time. We see new places, hear about new gossip and watch and think about a life story different from ours. Hence, some kind of a change is introduced to our lives in the form of new experiences. As we navigate through the new changes, absorbing what is interesting to us, time flies by, every minute filled with new discoveries.
And change is also perhaps the strongest motivation in our lives. Changes such as a job promotion, an acceptance letter to a prestigious university, or simply a delicious meal from a restaurant that you have never been to, can be desirable. These changes motivate us to try harder in whatever it is that we are doing. In my senior year of high school, I wanted desperately for a pleasant change to happen a year later. Hence, I drank a lot of coffee and pulled multiple all-nighters to write the perfect college application essay and to get the best GPA to get accepted to my dream college. The change that I wanted to happen served as the strongest motivation for me to focus on studying.
On the contrary, change can also be feared. One personal example is my GPA in school. I maintained a high GPA throughout high school and was quite satisfied with it. I did not want this feeling to go away in college, or in other words, I did not want the change of falling grades to happen to me, so this became a motivation for me to sit down and do my work. There are a lot of people who routinely repeat every morning that they don’t want to go to work or they don’t want to take classes because they feel as if everyday is the exact same mundane routine without any exciting changes. This way of thinking is not wrong, but at the same time, in the perspective of change, such daily routines are a deliberate choice. They are a choice motivated by an aversion to another change - losing a source of income or failing a university degree. So although we could choose to enact a change in life, we decide against it, as the fear of a different kind of change becomes the motivation to continue with the daily routine.
Change occurs every day of our lives whether we notice it or not and it influences our every course of action. So what changes are you looking forward to today? What is change to you?