Can We Change Without All the Change?

There’s a version of my marriage ending that goes like this: I recognized it wasn’t the right fit, I took steps to try to make it work, I communicated gracefully and peacefully, and as soon as I knew, my husband accepted it and everything was fine.

That is not the version that happened.

The version that happened was more like this: my body shut down because it knew the truth before I did. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. My heart was beating fast, and I had the kind of anxiety that made even your toenails feel foreign to your body. I knew if I didn’t communicate this really uncomfortable truth to someone I loved, I was probably going to die, or at least lose my mind. So, like any reasonable person with these symptoms would naturally do, I waited another month.

My point in telling this story is, I don’t think I’ve met one person who actually likes change. And my relationship to change has been a lot like what you just read: more “tied to the back of a truck and dragged down a gravel road” than “hey, you know what, let me just get behind the driver’s seat.”

A good friend of mine, Beth Lapides , has a song about change. The joke, more or less, is that change makes us miserable, but we also have to change to become happy. It’s funny because it’s true.

I’ve been thinking about that lyric a lot lately. Because if I’m honest, I don’t like change. I stayed in my marriage years longer than I should have, not because I thought it was healthy, not because I believed it was where I was meant to be, but because I knew it. There’s a strange comfort in the familiar, even when the familiar hurts. Looking back, I don’t think I was choosing my marriage. I was choosing certainty. And I’m not sure those are the same thing.

I’ve noticed the same thing in almost every area of life. People stay in jobs they’ve outgrown. Cities that no longer fit. Relationships they quietly know are over. Hell, we even keep clothes in our closets we don’t wear and that don’t fit. Versions of themselves they’ve already outlived. Not because they’re happy. Because they’re familiar.

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I’ve spent years meditating. Studying spirituality. Reading every book that tells me change is the only constant, that evolution is literally all that’s ever happening. The seasons change. Our bodies change. Our children change. Our cells change. Nothing in nature clings to one form forever. Except us. We’re the only species that seems genuinely offended by the idea.

And maybe that’s because change asks something terrifying of us. It asks us to let go of a version of ourselves before we’ve met the next one.

These days, when I feel that old familiar tightening (the toenail feeling, the can’t eat feeling), I try to ask myself one question before I do anything else: is this fear of the wrong thing, or fear of the unknown thing? Those aren’t the same fear, even though they feel identical in the body. One is information. The other is just resistance dressed up as instinct.

I still don’t love change. I don’t think I ever will. But I’ve gotten better at telling the two apart, and that’s been enough to get me out of the back of the truck.

Lately I’ve been wondering if the goal isn’t learning to love change. I’m not sure most of us ever will. Maybe the goal is recognizing when life is already asking us to change, and deciding to participate. To become the author instead of waiting to be edited. Because one way or another, life keeps moving. Nature doesn’t tolerate stagnation for long. The question isn’t whether change will come. It’s whether we’ll choose it before it chooses us.

So I’ll leave you with this: where in your life are you holding on simply because it’s familiar? And what might become possible if you trusted yourself enough to write the next chapter before life writes it for you?