Consistent Life

There is one constant in life; this one constant is that life is ever changing. From one second to the next, one moment, day, year; the people and world around us is always evolving, shifting to fit into the environment that it finds itself in so that it may better adapt. That is a constant, the consistency life, so graciously, provides for all of us is the stability of consistent instability. Not that this perception is one found in a negative light; on the contrary, this rebirth that is perpetually happening is that of a positive. We all evolve due to our experiences, good or bad, due to the people that we associate with; friends, family, coworkers, etc. And through these experiences we take on new ideas, new theories, new ways of believing our world and the world around us should be (or the way we wish it would be). Understanding these changes can be a determent or complicated at times. Reason being, I don't believe, we don't completely shirk the emotions, ideas, or feelings that we've scrapbooked throughout our lives. You mix these memories and outcomes with what our mind perceives our lives should be and it can become a volatile affair of the heart. Disappointments are crafted in this manner, failures are born from these ideas and because of them the changing process can become a tedious one. Those around us would say, "Let it go, these struggles made you who you are today...." but sometimes, unfortunately, the bottom line is we may not like who we are today. Maybe it's a love lost, a job opportunity squandered and now the idea of facing change, a new change, isn't as exciting or as acceptable. But the right frame of mind for these changes, whether they are up or they are down, is to understand that the only control we have is over ourselves. Outside of that, the only control we have is to understand we have no control at all; and when we come to realize this it opens up a level of freedom that one can not explain. With this idea one can truly start to challenge the inconsistency that we can sometimes find floating around our world; it's the idea that we must understand that who we are or who we want to become is based on letting the rest go. We can't control our friends, our loved ones, or our coworkers; whether they love us, like us, or accept us is completely out of our hands. For me, this understanding has been a slow, heartbreaking at times, tedious process. I am one whom relishes the idea of control, the opportunity to have a say in everything that is around me or that I involve myself with. Because of that longing for control it has had a complete and total opposite effect; the more I pushed the more things got away from me, the more I tried to keep the things around me the same the more they changed. I have loved and I have lost, I have failed more than I have succeeded, I have embraced the ever fragile workings of life and I have fought back against it only to find myself flat on my face and with more questions than I had when I started. But with those (as the old cliche goes) I have become stronger, I have a better understanding of self-worth, and found a calm that allows me to see everything in my world for what it is and not what I hope it could be or should be. Relationships are that much more meaningful, because there is no guarantee on when they will end or when life will change those involved. So now the idea of change is welcomed and it carries a sense of control and freedom like none ever felt; so that in a second, a moment, a day, a year there are no regrets and no dreadful "what if's" about anything that has gone on. I have learned that all of these things present and past are what will shape the future and this understanding brings a serene stability to an ever changing world.