Everything Changes
Remembering this may help us realize the meaning and value of the days we live in.
When I was studying at the University, I worked during the summer holidays for money and experience. One summer, I was working on a municipal project related to the city, and my manager was constantly giving me tasks that I didn’t like. I was constantly complaining. As if I could see the big picture, I was thinking, “Why did she give me these tasks? “She gives me always lots of work, but none to others?”. Thoughts were occupying my mind. One day my father said, “Do you realize that you will only be working here for three months and the first month has already passed?”. Even though it seemed easier to continue my complaints, realizing this fact made me feel lighter.
Looking back today, I see that the source of my anxiety was the fear of “I am experiencing this now, then I will always experience this”, created by our subconscious ability to assign a single event as the general life condition.
My mind was seeing the situation, “I would work there with that manager forever and I would always continue to do those tasks — which seemed ridiculous to me at the time but later I realized how enjoyable they were — “and it was acting as if I was caught in a trap.
Fortunately, even though I was a teenager, my father’s reminder was enough for me to realize that my thoughts were not real. I was able to focus on improving myself by gaining the experiences I needed to learn from that job.
In the following years, I worked in long-term jobs — short summer holiday jobs were left behind — but this did not change the fact that ultimately every period is temporary and unique.
Whether we want it or not, periods will one day be left behind in our business life, private life, internal or external journeys, parenthood, friendships, sisterhood, brotherhood, as a child of our parents, so all our identities that form our lives layer by layer. This is the case even if we hold on tightly and think we will always live like today and now.
If we look at the big picture, we can understand that even the conjuncture of the age we live in is temporary and will become completely different predictably or unpredictably.
As an example, if we had been born a hundred years ago, we would have lived in the socio-political-economic realities of a post-World War I world. If we had been born two hundred years ago, we would have been searching for our way in a world on the verge of industrialization. Three hundred years ago, we would most likely have had a warrior king or sultan.
Of course, there are still systems that have similar characteristics to their roots from the past, but they are not in that reality.
In other words, there is no doubt that today, where the rate of variation of thoughts, perceptions, and facts has increased more than ever, will also change. You can find evidence of it everywhere.
Considering all this, we can ask ourselves the following questions today:
How do we go through periods that will eventually change in our own lives?
By complaining and suffering, or by changing and improving as we go through experiences?
The answers can help us realize the meaning and value of the days we live in.
