2015 was one of the most challenging years of my life. From an unexpected breakup to a new job and new roommate, my daily routine got hit by a ton of changes in a matter of months. New Year's Eve--which just happened to be my thirtieth birthday--was fast approaching. I wanted to rise to life's challenges with grace and agility, but first I needed to realize what was holding me back.
You know how you get a song lyric stuck in your head and it's hard to get rid of it? I had that feeling all of 2015, not with song lyrics, but with two quotes. In the midst of major turbulence, I turned to the words of thinkers who seemed to have life figured out a bit more than I did. Here was my first guidepost: "Change is the only constant in life."
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to give the concept of flux serious thought. He likened it to stepping in the same river twice--it's impossible, because the water is constantly flowing. Change is an underlying force of the universe, but that doesn't mean it's easy to accept those outcomes you never saw coming.
Experience teaches us that living and loving involves inevitable risks: of being hurt, of feeling broken, of needing to start over, and then needing to start over again. If there were no risks, there'd be no rewards. In this way, living is a lot like writing: there has to be something at stake for the protagonist. Goals should not be easy to achieve, because no one would bother reading that book.
You, of course, are the protagonist of your own story. As for the changes that blindside you on an ordinary morning and turn your entire world upside down? Those are the hardest, sure, but they are also the best opportunities to grow, to adapt, and to realize that fear of the unknown is useless. Fear doesn't pay your bills or look good on your resume. Fear won't impress a first date or score you a second. Fear just holds you back, like an ex lover you can't quite shake.
The same can be said of regret. Just as you can never step in the same river twice, you can't go back and undo past decisions that caused certain relationships, career plans or friendships to run astray. But if you let go of trying to control all these variables, suddenly you can find freedom in the constantly changing nature of all things. Going with change, rather than against it, makes it less like a blunt force trauma and more like a white water rafting trip. For all its downsides, heartbreak makes you feel more alive. The only thing we can control is how we respond to life's inevitable flux--broken hearts be damned.
In 2016, I'm striving to embrace this flux mentality, and to be okay with not knowing entirely where I'm going. Last year brought with it a heavy dose of freaking out, but eventually I've started to see that change can be a good thing, even when it doesn't feel good. Change doesn't let you get too comfortable. Change reminds you that the universe isn't just some force acting upon you.
The only way we can bring about the external changes we want to see in our lives is by changing our internal attitude. Yes, this is hard, and it takes time and effort. But feeling down on your luck is a great time to reevaluate your mental thought processes, and ask yourself whether they are serving you well. If not, change them. You might as well, since everything else is changing.
This brings me to the second quote that got lodged in my brain last year. In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard says, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." The way I was spending my days in the beginning of 2015--freelancing but flailing, promising to write a novel but never actually writing it, arguing with my boyfriend, binge watching Netflix, you get the idea--was not how I wanted to be spending my life. I felt frustrated that the days kept slipping by, without my changing them.
Then change happened to me. From realizing the man I thought I would marry actually wanted different things, to transitioning from at home freelancing to a demanding office job to becoming a solo dog owner, change was truly my only constant last year. The only way I could handle so much flux without losing my sanity was to take it day by day, and to be easy on myself. In time, I started to feel more active about how I was approaching my days. I suddenly had the energy to change them.
How I spend my days now is drastically different than how I was spending them even six months ago. And that's a good thing, because that's a metric of growth. There's power in positive momentum.
I turned thirty this past New Year's Eve. I found myself reflecting on my twenties and envisioning my next decade as somehow more grown up, polished, professional, and put together. Which, come to think of it, sounds more like a wardrobe upgrade than a life.
New years resolutions can be intoxicating. We want to be swept up on a tide of collective change, becoming better people than we were the year before simply because we desire it. But if I've learned anything this past year, it's that goals cannot be achieved without a solid plan in place.
So this year I'm holding myself accountable to small changes that are doable. Making monumental goals without a definite plan is a recipe for disappointment and failure, which is why most people don't stick with that new diet or exercise regimen past January. Instead, approaching your resolutions as a series of small daily tweaks makes change more attainable. Plan on the unexpected happening, and don't let it derail you.
Instead of saying that I'll finally write that novel this year, I'm giving myself a weekly word count requirement. Instead of seeing my breakup as a terrible calamity I endured, I'm choosing to see it as a chance to reframe what kind of relationships I actually want in my life. I'm realizing that a year is not 365 days that just happen to us--they are 365 opportunities to build the kind of lives we want to live.