By Tinky Ningombam
It is hard for most people to adapt to change. It is hard to face fears or start something new for fear of the unknown. Normal life is normal and agreeable because we train ourselves to plan our lifestyle in a certain manner. To do things in a certain way which somehow give us predictable results. Most people try to stay and live safe by sticking to ways that has been tried and tested. Because breaking a system is hard as it can be unpredictable.
Most people find it annoying to change to new beds every night or drink something different in the morning every-day. Life works like a cycle and as long as it does it doesn’t alarm us. In order to have control of our lives, we feel that something in life should happen the same way as it has happened before. Common phrases -“This has how things have always been in the family.” “This is how we have always done things”. Some people called it stability.
As we also see in our daily lives that for this “fear of change,” most people stick to people with the same ideology or same belief so that they do not have to change their values or thoughts. Because we are wired to think that change normally comes with opposition/ conflict from people who have a different perspective.
There is a famous saying by Heraclitus that change is the only constant in life. That by changing, the physical realms of life survive and we as humans survive and remain. He said – ‘We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not’. Heraclitus took the example of a flowing river to show the state of flux our lives are in. When one steps into a river and one steps out and when you step in a second time, it’s not the same river that you are actually stepping into. Because the water in the river is flowing every second and when you step in the second time, it is completely different water that you are stepping into. Everything in life, as a matter of fact life itself, is a flux, ever-changing, ever-evolving and we should accept that.
Most of the times, change is not just a natural occurrence, it is not always thrown onto us, people have to incite change. Consider the state of the society, now more than ever, we are in a state of flux. There is definitely an uncertainty in everyone’s mind as to our progression into an industrial society. Will the markets open and thrive? Will the people be subdued with arms? Will everyone run away? Or will we stay the same old selves?
The power to incite change and to accept it is a tough one for most. Somehow, it seems that as long as the change makes us feel that we are not losing, we do not fear it. We need to find a new way to incite a change for good in us and in the society we live in. If things are going bad, maybe the old tricks are not working. If the bad experiences in history is repeating itself, maybe there has to be new solutions. We cannot afford to be thrown in imbalance every time a crisis hits the people. And if the structure is so frail, maybe change is what we need, in our thinking and in our approach. This is unfortunately easier said than done.
(“The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they – at some distant point in the future – will take over the reins. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely… because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.” ~Alvin Toffler)