Too often I hear people say they are afraid of change. What amazes me about this statement is we are constantly changing, everyday of our lives. We change our moods, our clothes, our tastes, our routines, and our minds. Each moment of change in our days are just tiny pieces of the larger picture. Yet we fail to see those small changes because we are too focused on the big picture. That’s where everyone’s fear of change stems from.
The idea of looking at the bigger picture has been burned into our minds since we were little kids. We we’re told to think about what we wanted to do when we grew up, during a time we barely knew how to tie our shoes, let alone pick out a logical and stable career path. Our parents were constantly teasing with the other parents of the kid who was opposite to our gender about how we were going to get married someday. And before we could even grasp the concept of why anyone would even want to hold hands with a boy, our school’s were stuffing flour sacks or raw eggs into our hands, expecting us to learn how to be parents; careers, marriage, children, all thrown at us before we even got into high school.
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Constantly throughout our lives we are expected to have future-vision, never present-vision. We are supposed to have this ever-present understanding of where our lives are going, where we’ll be in five years, ten years, twenty years; no shit we’re afraid of change.
We are so focused on this giant portrait of our lives, we don’t know how to stop and look at the fine details. Picasso never painted by starting with his end result, and neither should you. You start with a blank canvas and fine-tune each addition like Picasso, working his art brush in tiny intrinsic circles. Then you go back and add more details to those additions, or maybe you erase them, or maybe you leave them because you like how they came out. Regardless of how you do it, remember that your life is never going to be fully figured out until the very last day of it.
Take each moment with care, and do something you have never done before. Recognize your fears and do what scares you. Fear is just a mechanism from preventing us from being our best, most fulfilled self. Go on a date with someone you didn’t think would be your type, change your major to something you’re passionate about, buy radically new clothes, move to a new city, travel the world; whatever it is, just do it. And do it by taking this moment to prep yourself for this one detail in your final masterpiece. I’m not saying to just hop on a plane to Australia tomorrow, but use this time to take the next step to getting there, maybe by applying for your passport, or researching flights. Whatever it is you’re afraid of doing, there are a thousand small steps to be taken before you take the giant leap. If you live for each moment and take each moment with careful detail, suddenly you’ll find yourself doing what you originally thought you were too afraid to do. And maybe when you’re 90 years old, you’ll look at your masterpiece and realize you were actually Picasso all along.
