Ch... ch... ch... changes

I don't like change. I fear change. I want to plan for change. Of course I know this not only to be ridiculous but also impossible. You can't plan everything. Sometimes stuff happens out of nowhere and you have to deal with it at the time. And what's the point of worrying till then? I often wish that I had more buddhist qualities engrained in my character, because the buddhists have accepted pain and suffering as inescapable and unavoidable obstacles that one must deal with in one's life and with which one will deal as the time comes.

Why am I rambling, you may wonder. Well, I might have a job prospect. At the time of writing it is a job prospect beyond the denominator of vague, but a possible job prospect it is. Somehow I have gotten it in my head that taking this job or not will determine the rest of my future existence. I know that is insane. But still it feels like a major life-changing decision that will affect me for years to come. The reason why this is so scary for me is because it is not the life that I have envisioned for myself ever since I went to college. The fact that my plan for myself might change is breathtaking (and not in a good way).

But then I had a revelation. Things change. Of course they do, you want to tell me. And of course I know. Rationally. But it's like, now, I KNOW. And things have changed for me already. I used to think that I would go to Harvard. But I never went. And despite having thought about maybe spending summer school there, I never regretted never having gone. I used to think that I would live in the U.S. Having lived in LA for six months, however, made me change my mind. I used to think that I wanted to spend a year in New York. Turns out that five weeks was more than enough for me. I used to think that I wanted to be married before I was 30. Now I am going on a 9-month world trip and will probably come back totally broke without any money for any wedding. I used to think that I would do great things with my life. But right now I dream of being a full time wife and mother who spends her time doing volunteer work and cooking. I thought that I would end up with a broke scholar, someone who had studied something obscure and absolutely useless in the real world, just like me. Maybe a Cultural Anthropology major. Instead I started dating a high school drop out who almost has a degree in Business Administration and who likes to wear suits to work. The idea of leaving my friends still scares me to death, yet I now see that other friends, friends who used to live across the hall and whom I couldn't imagine my life without, have moved on to bigger and better things, sometimes relatively close, sometimes farther away, sometimes across the ocean. We don't see each other very often. But we're still friends despite all the changes.

So you see? It'll all be okay.