Learning How to Begin Again

Change can really throw you down on your knees. I’m not talking about the kind of change that rearranges your schedule for the day or even a bad haircut. I’m talking about losing your job kind of change. Finding out you’re expecting a baby kind of change. After years of being in a relationship, you are now single again kind of change. The kind of change that alters your life. These changes can leave you confused about the right decisions to make. Maybe it's due to a previous poor choice or just pure coincidence (eventhough I don't believe in coincidences). Despite the fact, this is now the time to make the “right” decision and pick up the pieces. You must begin again. 

True, there is always a moment to mourn, pity yourself, complain, debate with the little voice inside on what you should have and could have done, but this window is short. Life will continue to move forward whether or not you are ready to act. Once you act you are no longer in free fall, but you do enter a world of uncertainty and doubt. Looking at how much is left in your bank account is nerve wrecking. Deciding you’re going to bring a life into the world before you are ready is scary. Allowing someone to get to know you, like really really get to know you is terrifying. Change has its way of questioning the person you thought you were. The one thing these challenges guarantee is this: it makes you into the person you were scared you would become OR it turns into the kind of person that is greater than you dared to imagine. These life altering changes are meant to make us, expand us, and free us from the small box we put ourselves

 in.

As I approach 25, I find myself nervous of the change that is coming my way: the things I didn’t anticipate, the things I banked on but haven’t happened yet…. mainly the way that I’m changing. Your 20's, 30's, 40's all have their moments, but your 20's in particular is when you begin to become that adult you’ve envisioned since your preteen years. What you have been preparing for is starting to fall into place little by little, and it’s easy to want to delay the inevitable (growing-up). It’s easy to say you’re just not ready yet. My peers are the most over-parented generation yet. More and more of us have moved back home. Many of our parents are involved in many, if not most of decisions. There is an invisible safety blanket that can be relied on if life gets a bit too rough. In the long run this is not what will help us see what we are made of, it’ll only reaffirm what we already fear—I can’t do it. Challenging yourself to not live in that thought is the battle. Choosing to act as if YOU ARE READY will bring out the best you have to offer, for that’s the only person that can make it happen.  

Change will absolutely throw you on your knees and make you feel small, but know that on the way up, there’s a strength that can never leave you because now you know it can be done.