Change, Part 2

Change, Part 1

In the aftermath of my break-up and its related fall-out, I've been plagued with all of my self-depreciating thoughts and ideas. These things aren't new-comers to my head by any means, but they'd taken a leave of absence, and I wasn't entirely equipped to deal with them when they returned. The shapes and forms of these thoughts vary, but what they all melt down to in the end is I am worthless and nothing has changed.

For some reason, the second one has been a lot more prevalent, possibly because a year ago I was so certain that everything would change, and so my worst fear at this moment is that everything from the past year is a waste.

My friends have all been trying to convince me that this is untrue, and while I was thinking today, something my friend Sam said stuck out the most.

You look in the mirror every day and see the same person; never noticing the microscopic changes and growth. When I hang with you once every week to a couple weeks, each time I see something new that you've developed and learned that makes you an even better person than you were before. Nothing you say can convince me otherwise.

This has been a long time coming, but she's right.

For the past two days, I've been applying for jobs. This alone marks a change—a willingness to give up free time and do something that requires more effort—but it's the application process itself that, for me, really measures a change. A year ago, I never would have been able to just walk in to a store or a restaurant and ask, “Are you guys accepting applications?” It sounds like an easy thing to do, but a year ago I would have locked up, panicked, and never actually asked.

Sam, and all the other people who have been trying to convince me for the past few weeks, are right. Change isn't something black an white, Before and After. It's gradual, like looking in the mirror one day and realizing my hair is long again (which it is, but that's beside the point.) Change doesn't happen over night, and sometimes that's good—too much change all at once is likely to short out our mental circuits. But that also makes it harder to see, harder to measure.

And maybe that's the point. Maybe it's not supposed to be something that's easy to measure and quantify. Maybe change is gradual because it forces us to take good, hard looks at our life, both in its current and former states. Perhaps the Universe made change move slowly, simply so we would never forget to look for it.

Because the only thing that never changes is that everything does.