Change

“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”

 –Jiddu Krishnamurti

This is one of my favourite quotes by J. Krishnamurti, and, in my mind, the main reason for our reluctance to change. The first part made me stop and think no, not true, it is the fear of the unknown which holds us back. But if that was true, we wouldn’t even go on a vacation. Imagine someone gave you money to travel. Hawaii, Paris, a cruise, or a camping trip around the corner, it doesn’t matter. What makes us go is the excitement of the new.

Or remember the sweetness of falling in love. You meet someone, and the attraction is like a magnet. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you just want to be with this person. If we were afraid of the unknown, we would never invite someone into our lives, much less be open for love.

When we start a new project, we feel excitement, not fear. But when this new project means leaving something else behind, our emotional response may be different. Let’s say you want to switch careers. You have a good idea of what excites you, what you’re good at, and how you want to live. Friends encourage you, and every time you think about his new idea, you feel a lightness you haven’t known in years. Then comes the day you have to give notice to your employer, and your mind plays a hundred tricks to keep you back. What if I’m not good enough. What if I won’t make enough money, what if I fail. I’d better stay.

But life is change, that’s the whole point. From the day we were born we have to let go in order to grow. We let go of infancy and learn how to walk. We go from elementary school to high school, to work. We leave our family of origin to start our own. Each gain comes with the loss of something old.

And just as we clean out our closets from time to time, it would be helpful to let go of old belief systems. Delete those voices in our heads which are not your own. Often they came from our parents and were passed on to us at an age when we absorbed everything like a sponge. Then we started school and listened to what our teachers said about us. The spark and the innocence we were born with shrinks and gets pushed aside by the limited beliefs others have about us. Growing up means to find this spark again.

Imagine someone had said to you as a baby, “Don’t start to walk. Keep crawling because you do it so well.” Crazy, right? But sometimes this is what we say to ourselves. We dream of something new, but we don’t take the step to get there.

Life isn’t meant to be stagnant. Just like we open the windows in the morning and welcome the fresh air, we can open ourselves to a new way of being where fear has no room.