Change: Part I

For your information, this post was written on May 2-3, 2012. Why is it being posted on May 10th? Read, and then I'll explain after the post-proper is finished. :)


***

Change seems to be a popular topic recently. It feels like everyone I talk to is going into a new phase of life—scary, exciting, or both—myself absolutely included. Can I just finally admit that I'm scared out of my mind? That every day I think about some reason or another that I shouldn't be going to London? Or something that would just be better, or easier, if I wasn't going to London?

It's funny, because I've always been proud of the way I can take risks and adapt to change. Downright boastful, in fact. I can't name the number of times I've talked about how much I love leaving old places behind and finding new ones, getting to know new people. This time it's different though. I guess I forget how scary it is. Or maybe it's the fact that this time, I really chose this for myself (instead of having the AF and my parents foist it upon me) and that I'm going to be incredibly alone over there. Whatever it is, I've been questioning this decision for months now, and if I'm being totally honest, my excitement level has been hovering around zero with very few upward spikes for literally weeks now. It's actually probably more like months.

Can I be real right now and tell you that if there was a magic button I could press that would let me erase all of this crazy London idea, I would totally do it?

That's completely insane though, isn't it? Because who wouldn't want to spend the summer in London?

Well, right now, me, because I'm scared. I'm scared because going over there is going to be a huge change, the kind of change I don't want to handle. Going there is going to be a change, coming back is going to be a change, and $#!% is going to get real after I get back. London is like the freaking gateway to all that crap and it just seems like everything would have been easier if I could have just coasted into it. Instead, I decided to start it all with some cliff jumping. Why did I do this to myself? I feel like I've completely lost control of my life: like I'm a sheep getting herded, or like I'm stuck in a crowd that's moving and bottle-necking, and there's no way I can do anything to stop moving with them. Whether I want to go that way or not, I have no choice. It's a terrible, terrible feeling.

All this talk of change and facing change and dealing with change hasn't just been cropping up in the real world, in the lives of real people. It jumped up in my reading of Elizabeth Gaskill's North and South (HIGHLY recommended, though I'm sure most of you will never read it) last night. There's some really insightful passages that I'd like to share with you right now.

In the book, the lead character Margaret moves away from the town she's lived in all her life. After several years, she returns to this place she once called "home" and finds that things have changed, as things are wont to do. It's distressing for her, and so she talks to her godfather about it. What he tells her is this: "It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive."

Even though I'm far from being a stranger to change, I think there's still a part of me that resists thinking of it as a "matter of course"—when I'm in the kind of state I'm in (emotionally unstable, tired, lonely, scared: take your pick), change and instability can still feel "new and oppressive." It's frustrating, really. But let's keep going because Elizabeth Gaskill goes on to say something profound and spiritual and profoundly spiritual about change when Margaret is finding all this change to be so oppressive:

A sense of change, of individual nothingness, of perplexity and disappointment, over-powered Margaret. Nothing had been the same; and this slight, all-pervading instability, had given her greater pain than if all had been too entirely changed for her to recognize it. 

"I begin to understand now what heaven must be--and, oh! the grandeur and repose of the words--'The same yesterday, today, and forever.' Everlasting! 'From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.' That sky above me looks as though it could not change, and yet it will. I am so tired--so tired of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place; it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy continually."

I guess it just hasn't occurred to me lately how much life is all about change—we are constantly walking on unstable ground. We have so little control over our lives, and everything could change in a moment. The rug of mortality could be pulled out from under our feet in a second; worse yet, someone else's rug could get pulled and then we'd have to deal with how that changes our lives. Other people, the natural world, our own selves are in a state of constant, rapid change, whether for good or ill. If you're like me (and, to some extent, I'm sure all of you are), change is overwhelming and exhausting. I hate dealing with it when it happens to me, I hate doing it when I have to initiate it (remember this post?). But it's because of how much I don't like change in the majority of situations that I can appreciate how absolutely divine it is to think of life "from everlasting to everlasting"; of people who are "the same yesterday, today, and forever"—because we're trying to become like God, we want to be the same everlastingly. Sure, it'll take progress (that's code for: "positive change") to get to that place... but what a place it'll be, don't you think? I mean, wow. Wow. Can you imagine how peaceful that will be? I can't wait to have that kind of peace—eternal, forever, not-going-anywhere, can't-be-disturbed-by-anything peace. Won't it be nice?

In all reality, thinking about this doesn't make me feel a lick better about the whole going to London thing. I guess it helps me accept change as part of the growth process, and got my mind on a better plane of thought (a.k.a. straight up distracts me) which I really needed. Yes, I'm still freaking out. But I'm going to be fine. This is what life is: it's change, it's learning, and it's something over which I have no control. The things I'm missing out on in Provo, the things that have already happened because I left Provo, the things that are going to happen when I get back to Provo ... well, I can't control them any more than I can herd cats. That's not to say that I won't try, but thinking about herding cats will definitely let me laugh about my complete lack of control.

And laughter's the best of medicines, right? :)

***

Here we are, at the end of the post. As you might have noticed, I was (well, for me right now it's "am") in a kinda rough place. This whole trip still doesn't feel real. Well, it probably feels pretty real by now because by the time any of you will be reading this, I will be in London (Unless I die and this auto-posts anyways. (Oh my gosh. That better not happen. That would not be funny (Knock on wood.))).


(Also, it's really weird to be writing this in the futur antérieur (What do we even call that in English? The future perfect? Idk.) because right now I'm still in that weird place and I'm like, reflecting on what it'll be like to be over the hump I'm currently on the uphill slope of, you know? This is probably getting really confusing for you ... I'll stop)


ANYWAYS, what I'm getting at is that I'm the kind of person that just needs to talk and write and stew over things until I can make sense of them by myself. (You may or may not have realized this about me.) So, post-posting this post is just my way of letting myself handle my situation and my feelings without getting anyone worrying about me or (worse) sending me encouraging texts or comments... (because for whatever reason, I can't stand the thought of that right now). It's nothing personal; this was just something I needed to handle my way. Love you all dearly :) -K