Change Is Inevitable, Progress Is Optional.

Everyone instinctively knows that change is inevitable. But few of us seem truly welcome change with open arms. We get comfortable with current routines, pleased with current roles, happy with current relationships. It’s easy to see why we become invested in the status quo. After all - the current situation may be far from ideal, but to change could usher in all kinds of uncomfortable realities and things unimagined.

So, behind our fear of change is really a fear of what we can’t imagine. In fact - sometimes it is not even a lack of imagination that keeps us clinging to the staus quo - even worse, we actively imagine things changing for the worse rather than things changing for the better!

Perhaps surprisingly, Marcus Aurelius, the stoic statesman and legendary Emperor of Rome - had an almost jubilant view of change, and I believe it’s because he saw change as a welcome, almost magic elixir for progress rather than a force of destruction and decay. He wrote:

“Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a hot bath unless the wood for the fire undergoes a change? And can you be nourished unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?”

As you greet the day, do you get excited for the changes that might take place? Or does worry and anxiety could your actions? Marcus Aurelius would urge you to seek out and welcome change, and invite it to the table like a returning hero. When change arrives, progress is around the corner. But we need to be actively - even enthusiastically - looking for that progress rather than bemoaning the fact that change is happening.

Change is always and in all times, inevitable. Progress is entirely optional and deeply linked with how we view change in the first place.

“Loss is nothing else but change,
and change is Nature’s delight.”
-Marcus Aurelius