Transitions

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Does anyone ACTUALLY like waiting? The agony of driving so slow you could walk past the cars around you, gritting your teeth as you hope to find parking before the show begins. Pacing back and forth in front of the phone, waiting for that one call and hoping it's good news and that you got your dream job. Exposing your deepest secrets to a friend, biting your lip as they hesitate to respond. Waiting is hard, harrowing, and frustrating. Can there really be any good to it?

I don't like change. I'm a planner; I have lists, schedules, and I can never go anywhere without a way to tell time. And yet college appears to be synonymous with change. When does change stop? When will I be in a place where I can finally say "I feel perfectly comfortable. There are no more changes coming my way."?

As you might have guessed, I don't have much hope for such a future. Because life is transition. Life is changing, developing, and learning as we carry on. Our end goal isn't to be comfortable, as unfortunate as that may sound for those who emphasize with me. Our end goal is to find joy and lasting happiness, which can only be found by living in the moment and learning from each new change. Life isn't in waiting, it's in actively changing.

Life isn't the frustration of being stopped in traffic; it's the joy of listening to the rest of your favorite album. Life isn't anxiously looking back on your job interview; it's deciding on ways to be even better for the next one. Change is one of the most common stressors for all humans. We simply don't like change, even though we cannot avoid it.

But change gives us a way to learn to find peace amongst stress. We can find joy and lasting happiness as we choose to find peace in transition, because that is what life is.

It is in the waiting that we grow.