Like the Tides: Change is the Only Constant

I firmly believe that every experience you undergo in your life, weather good or bad, accumulates and compiles into the person you become, the truths you accept, the perfective you view life from, and the way in which you carry yourself. The bad days are lessons to teach you how to be better, do better, and cope with hardship, while also adding value to the blessing of good days and good experiences. If who you are is what you have learned, then I am who I am from the lessons time by the ocean has taught me.

"Move with the Currents and Change with the Tides"

If there is one standout, vital piece of truth that I have learned to accept from my observations of nature, it is the absolute impermanence of everything. I see it everyday, people fight to hold on to familiarity when that is simply not where the magic is. The idea that life is constantly changing and rolling at an inevitable rate is a tough one to comprehend, and I myself have struggled with this. As I see the waves and the way they never cease, I see that in my own life. As a new college student setting out on the first leg of adulthood and independence in a very new environment, I felt the sting of the familiarity of my hometown and my high school days as I looked out into the unknown. It was a hard goodbye, leaving all Ive ever known for a place that I felt like i'd never know.

Despite this bitter departure, I turned to my inner place of refuge and drew a connection between my ever-changing life and the manic tossing and turning of the waves. While some days the waves are rough and angry, and other days calm and glassy, they have one thing in common: the waves never stop. And the most relaxing part of that truth is that no one has ever expected them to. So why do we expect to hold on to moments and feelings forever? The most beautiful contradiction is in the fact that the only constant in the ocean is the absolute impermanence.

Once one gets fully acquainted with the idea that the only constant is change, then life flows in a sequence that is now understandable as inevitable and intricately designed for the greater good. Despite the rough and the harsh days, the winds continue to blow and the tides continue to flow to smoother conditions, and that fact alone puts life in a manageable perspective of beautifully strung moments connected by inevitability. Like the tides, we move and we learn and change. This alone is the beauty of the inevitability and the promise of change as a constant.

"We can't change the moon but we can live in harmony with its tides, and we can make some ripples of our own" Germaine Greer