Earrings. They seem quite mundane, do they not? Just jewelry that happens to be worn on the ears. However, there can be read into them a much deeper meaning.

When you first get your ears pierced, you have to choose which earrings you want to wear for the next eight weeks, because once you pick and get them pierced, you're stuck with them. Naturally, having earrings in feels odd for a while, you're self-conscious of them for a week or so. Then, it normalizes. Then, when the eight weeks of waiting are up, you can change your earrings for the first time. Maybe you already own earrings and have been waiting to show them off, but maybe you need to take an afternoon and treat yourself, buy yourself your first new pair. Once this is done, it feels strange to be wearing them because you've been wearing the same earrings for two months. Such a sudden change in appearance, however minor it may be, affects your overall bearing. This is the case for the first few changes you make in terms of earrings. After that, you get used to a new pair and you learn how to wear other ones. You buy yourself a couple new pairs and get some for your birthday and the holidays. Suddenly, earrings have become normal.

As the title suggests, earrings are a metaphor for change.

You make a decision to change and have to stick with it, because once it's been made, there's no going back. Changing anything is bound to have effects, you're bound to react in some way. Then, you go back to normal because you've become accustomed to the change. And so life continues, not so different from how it was before. Then, a change comes again. This time, its effects are more major. People may notice more, and, of course, you feel more different going about your daily life than you did before. A few smaller changes later, each of less and less significance, you, again, regain normality and life goes on.

This metaphor, this template for change, can be applied to any change: moving out, having children, going to college. As I have experienced this last one, I'll use it as a case study.

The first change--when you get your ears pierced--is when you hear back from colleges and--now this is choosing your earrings--commit to attend one of the ones that accepted you. There is the obvious excitement and having to tell anyone and everyone where you're going and where you got accepted, but then that all dies down and life returns to normal. The next big change is actually going to college--changing your earrings for the first time. Of course people will notice that you no longer live at home, and you will notice that more than anyone. You'll be self-conscious in this new, foreign environment, and less sure of yourself. The next, more minor changes, might--this is now when you change earrings--be doing laundry for the first time or getting sick and having to figure it out for yourself for the first time; these are all firsts. After that, once you've done these all a couple times, then it becomes, again, normal--thus ending on how earrings eventually become usual.

As such, earrings and getting your ears pierced are a metaphor for change of all kinds.