How Change Changes Us
About a month ago I graduated from college, and it felt like a fever dream. For months leading up to that day, I never felt the nagging sadness that usually accompanies the end of something significant. After it was over, the celebration stopped. I had accomplished what I had set out to do and achieved the highest academic honor I could. 17 years of work, struggle, and growth, all stopped. What started was something that I knew was coming but had never felt before: an overwhelming sense of emptiness.
I have never been someone who has felt unhappy with their life. Like everyone else, I’ve had my fair share of struggles, but I have a loving family, wonderful friends, and access to the best resources available. The difficult part about life now is that none of this has changed, but the circumstances have. School no longer controls my schedule, my social life has changed as I watch my friends move away or settle into their new form of normal, and my family continues to live in the comfort of their developed daily routines. I still have access to every resource I could imagine and every opportunity the world allows me. What then, is this emptiness a result of?
The answer, in my case, is life’s most trivial yet most unsolvable problem: change. From my experience, no matter how much someone may say they like change, no one is completely comfortable with it. People simply have varying degrees of sensitivity to change, and I happen to be someone who is highly sensitive to it. I don’t think that makes me inherently “better” or “worse” off, it just makes dealing with the natural ebbs and flows of life more difficult. For me, change always results in a feeling of emptiness because I have always felt like I have lost something when things change. Relationships, a sense of security, the foundation of understanding, all of these things tend to decrease or diminish in some way when things change in my life. That’s not to say they never come back, but it takes time. Graduation and the end of college were big changes for me, and I am only now starting to feel their effect; like the aftershocks of a huge earthquake.
By now most of us have figured out that we can’t stop change from happening, so how does one combat the accompanying feeling of emptiness? I have learned that forcing yourself to be comfortable with what makes you uncomfortable works sometimes, depending on the situation, but not all the time. What then is a more full-proof solution to this issue?
I believe the answer is perspective and introspection because you must first understand your internal reactions and triggers before attempting to control your external circumstances. It’s important to understand the deeper meaning behind the things that significantly impact us. But, the most important thing to remember is that sometimes putting our thoughts, feelings, or opinions into action is not easy. It’s okay to have expectations, but it’s also okay to adjust them or change them completely to better fit your current capacity. One of the most comforting things to understand is that in the midst of discomfort, there is abundant opportunity to learn and grow. Never feel defeated by the current circumstances. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what they are; they won’t be the same tomorrow.
So my friends, if you’re feeling empty right now, for whatever reason, there is someone out there that is feeling empty too. It will take time to fill that space. It will not always make you happy or be something you expect, but it will happen. If you’ve felt like you lost something, there is a reason it was lost. It may come back in a way you were expecting; it may not. But it will always come back, and it is then you will have an opportunity for you to fill that empty space. It just may change you, for the better.
