Our Ever-Changing Existence

My life has changed a lot over the past few years, more than I could have imagined, which only being out of university a few years is perhaps quite normal but will things ever stop changing so much? My guess is that the rate of change isn't going to be slowing down for quite some time. I'm not talking about just the rapidly evolving technology that is changing the very fabric of our society, but, the rest of our lives too.

Going into the details of the biggest semi-recent changes of my life would show you that we are all quite similar - meet girl, fall in love, move in together, get married, get a house, get a pet, get a baby (the last 4 can be changed into any order). These big milestones are clear changes that we prepare ourselves for whether we know it or not - so how about the rest of life?

So much is changing constantly, be it our own doing or otherwise, and it can be difficult to ever feel truly settled and ready to start. Perhaps you want to start a diet or exercise plan but you can't start yet because you've just changed to a new job and need to focus your energy on that, or perhaps you want to learn a language but you've been putting off starting because there are still renovations to be done in the house which should take higher priority.

The truth is there are always more things that we want to change than we have time for, or as Elton John put it "There's more to be seen than can ever be seen, More to do than can ever be done". I think it is this reason that we are so eager to make changes at the start of a new year in the form of New Year's Resolutions - your ability to make changes in January is no better than any other time of the year but this arbitrary mark in our calendar somehow makes things feel more meaningful. Speaking of arbitrary events, have you ever thought you will start keeping your To Do app up-to-date when you get a new & better phone? What I'm trying to get at here is that there is always a reason not to start something.

This article is not about prioritising task & goals (or cutting things out completely) rather it is about recognising these blockers as completely made-up by ourselves and because life is constantly changing, we can constantly come up with new reasons to not do something. As humans, we want to start from a solid & stable base in order to give ourselves the best chance of success, however, the issue with this is that things are never stable, at least not for very long. There are new challenges that get thrown at us every week and it's too easy to use this as an excuse to not start the things that would really fulfil us.

You can't sleep for a few years and never need to worry about sleeping again, you can't eat 1,000,000 calories and be done for the year, you can't pay 20k for car insurance and never have to worry again and you can't spend 1,000 hours to learn a language and never need to practise again. Our strong and stable base is derived from our habits and past experiences, not from the things we own or the plans we make. The state of your world is constantly changing so rather than putting things off to wait for the perfect base to start, just start now and see how it goes.

It is also too easy to use the aforementioned advancements in technology as excuses for starting later so things will be easier. A new phone isn't going to improve your language learning (you despite what the adverts tell you) just like getting that smart watch isn't going to make you stick to your exercise plan - both of these may help but don't fall into the trap of thinking they will do the hard work.

To conclude, life is always changing, through the big milestones that we know about & prepare for as well as through the day-to-day goings on. You can't control everything - there will never be a perfect time to start, so try not to allow the smallest of bumps to block you.