Sheryl Crow once professed in one of her songs that a change would do you good. What she perhaps failed to mention in said song was that change, however good, isn’t necessarily painless.
One oft used adage is that the only certainty in life is change. Indeed, if things remained stagnant for too long a period of time, then there isn’t much life being lived. Going through the same routine day after day after day can be a mindnumbing experience, and it isn’t uncommon that one day you wake up from your monotonous existence only to ask, to where have the days, weeks and months flown by?
We always use change as a getaway car. When we brood things over for too long, people tell us, move on. When we find that something is lacking in our lives, we try something new, we make a change. Sometimes we move forwards, sometimes we take a few steps backwards, but it’s all about deviating from the status quo, in the pursuit of trying to find something that satisfies us, even temporarily.
As humans we are rarely content for long periods of time; happiness and satisfaction is always relative to us. There is always a better model, a better way, a better method, a better direction. There is also never perfection in us as human beings, for the very reason that perfection itself only exists in the Almighty.
The very idea that one man’s meat is another’s poison tells us that there will never be a situation where everyone will be happy; where everyone’s utility will be maximised at the same level – and that in itself lends us the idea that there really is no such thing as perfection in our human lives.
And in the absence of perfection, we aspire to reach as high as we can, to scale the heights of our illusionary grandeur where for a few moments, at least, we taste what we believe is ‘perfect’ ; even though we are never even near the pinnacle of the mountain that we are climbing.
With change we always leave something behind – at the very least, we leave our past behind us. Leaving that past may not involve pain for us – in fact we may even experience elation at moving on; but at the same time, as we leave, we may, however unintentionally, inflict pain on those we leave behind.
Nothing in life is painless. It’s how you deal with the pain that makes you stronger; or destroys you.
