Changes

The truth is that no matter what changes you want to make to your life or to yourself, even the good ones, it will fundamentally change something about the way you relate to yourself...something you didn't anticipate.

None of us likes everything about ourselves. We don't. There's something that each and every one of us would change if we had the chance. Something small, something big, something deep, something cosmetic, something everyone sees, something only we see, something we are, something we feel. 

But very few understand that changing something about yourself feels like it changes the fundamental nature of who you are, too. 

Even if it's something you didn't particularly like about you. 

Because you've only ever had a chance to live in your body. You haven't gotten to try anything else out; you've always been you. That means that even the things you don't like, you've learned to live with. Whatever that means for you. You have learned to live your days with the burden of the thing you don't like about you and in doing so, it has become part of your story. 

That time it kept you from doing something you wanted to do. That moment when it became more defining than you wanted it to be. That chance meeting that suddenly became something else entirely because that part of you came out and it changed the tone of everything around you. Your story is told in moments like these, and in these moments, you have been...well...you. 

Pile enough moments like these up, and you're convinced that if you're ever given the chance, you'd jump at it - at any opportunity to change this thing about you. 

But if you actually do get that chance, you suddenly wonder...who are you without it? 

Sometimes, it's because that thing is just fundamentally us. I mean, if you don't like your nose and you want forever to change your nose and you finally change your nose, then when you look in the mirror for the first season, you're not going to recognize yourself in the same way. Something about you is different. Something about you is lost. 

Sometimes, it's because the thing we don't like about ourself consumes so much of our energy, so much of our head space, so much of our attention that once we change it, we don't know who we are without that pet project any more. Who am I if I am not obsessing about this broken-ish thing that I hate about me? Who am I if I'm not the person trying to overcome it? 

Don't get me wrong - it can be a blessing. Absolutely. But it's also...a grief? It's a major fundamental change in the nature of the self that we're living in...a person with whom we are intimately connected, even in the things we don't like about that. And all of a sudden, we lose that part of ourselves and even if we wanted to lose it, even if we did it on purpose, something's...different. And we have to learn to deal with that. 

I think more of us need to think about that before we go on changing things. We need to honor the stories we're living now, even with our ugly bits, so that we really understand what it will mean to separate from them and move on when that opportunity comes. If, that is, we decide that we really want to. 

Sometimes, I'll tell you from experience, we find that the things we thought we hated about ourselves are the things that have created the very details in our stories that we're most fond of and you know what? Maybe we're not willing to lose that after all. Not when it really comes down to it. And...that's okay, too. 

Just something to think about.