During all fourteen seasons of the hit medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy has provided viewers with weekly monologues of advice and life lessons that are explored throughout each episode. Perhaps one of the most challenging states of life is change. It’s something that happens all the time but is highlighted most by spring. Spring is a time of growth and new life, and with new life, comes change. Whether you’re graduating, prepping for summer, starting a new job, or any of the plethoras of stressful life transitions, here are some quotes from our favorite medical minds to help you along the way.
1. Season 7, Episode 1 - With You I’m Born Again
“When we say things like, ‘People don’t change.’ It drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant. Energy, matter, it’s always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying. It’s the way people try not to change that’s unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones. The way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change is constant. How we experience change, that is up to us. It can feel like death or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it. It can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment, we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment we can be born all over again.” - Meredith Grey
2. Season 9, Episode 14 - The Face of Change
“Change is a funny thing, not everyone can handle it. It can sneak up on you. Things aren’t what they use to be. The whole world is transformed. You realize the ground beneath you has shifted. Things are uncertain and there’s no turning back. The world around you is different now. Unrecognizable, and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re stuck and the future is staring you in the face and you’re not sure you like what you see. Like I said, I’m not big into change.” - Alex Karev
3. Season 9, Episode 6 - Second Opinion
“It can be scary to find out you’ve been wrong about something but we can’t be afraid to change our minds, to accept that things are different, that they’ll never be the same, for better or for worse. We have to be willing to give up what we used to believe. The more we’re willing to accept what is and not what we thought, we’ll find ourselves exactly where we belong.” - Meredith Grey
4. Season 1, Episode 8 - Save Me
“At the end of the day, faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don’t really expect it. It’s like one day you realize the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed of. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. And it’s not so important that it’s happy ever after just that it’s happy right now. See once in a while, once in a blue moon people will surprise you. And once and a while people may even take your breath away.” - Meredith Grey
5. Season 7, Episode 5 - Almost Grown
“We all want to grow up. We’re desperate to get there. To grab all the opportunities we can. To live. We’re so busy trying to get out of the nest, we don’t think about the fact that it’s going to be cold out there, really freaking cold because growing up sometimes means leaving people behind. And by the time we stand on our own two feet, we’re standing there alone.” - Meredith Grey
6. Season 7, Episode 4 - Can’t Fight Biology
“Biology says that we are who we are from birth. That our biology is set in stone, unchangeable. Our DNA doesn’t account for all of us though. We’re humans, life changes us. We develop new traits, become less territorial. We stop competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse, we find ways to become more than our biology. The risk, of course, is that we can change too much. To the point that we don’t recognize ourselves. Finding our way back can be difficult. There’s no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God we get there.” - Meredith Grey
7. Season 4, Episode 8 - Forever Young
“There comes a point in your life when you’re officially an adult. Suddenly you’re old enough to vote, drink and engage in other adult activities. Suddenly people expect you to be responsible, serious, a grown up. We get taller, we get older but do we ever really grow up? In some ways we grow up, we have families, we get married, divorced but for the most part, we still have the same problems we had we when we were fifteen. No matter how much we grow taller, grow older, we are still forever stumbling, forever wondering, forever young.” - Meredith Grey
8. Season 4, Episode 1 - Change Is Gonna Come
“Change, we don’t like it. We fear it but we can’t but we can’t stop it from coming. We either adapt to change or we get left behind. It hurts to grow, anybody who tells you it doesn’t is lying but hears the truth, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same and sometimes, oh, sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is everything.” - Meredith Grey
9. Season 2, Episode 18 - Yesterday
“I heard it’s hard to grow up, I’ve just never met anyone who’s actually done it. Without parents to defy, we break the rules, we make for ourselves. We throw tantrums when things don’t go our way. We whisper secrets with our best friends in the dark, we look for comfort where we can find it and we hope, all logic against it, all experience, like children we never give up hope.” - Meredith Grey
10. Season 6, Episode 14 -Valentine’s Day Massacre
“We have to keep reinventing ourselves, almost every minute because the world can change in an instant and there’s no time for looking back. Sometimes the changes are forced on us. Sometimes they happen by accident and we make the most of them. We have to constantly come up with ways to fix ourselves. So we change, we adapt, we create new versions of ourselves. We just need to be sure that this one is an improvement over the last one.” - Meredith Grey
Change is an implicit part of life, and it can be scary, but there’s no one more prepared to live your life than you. So take life by the hand and live it to your fullest, braving the changes and the challenges as they come!
Grey’s Anatomy airs at 8 PM on Thursday nights on ABC.
