Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!

Being stuck is a horrible feeling. Be it in traffic, your job, in a relationship or in your life–there is nothing more frustrating than being stuck. In a perfect scenario, no one would ever get stuck. But then life isn’t a perfect scenario. It is a game with cheat codes. And the cheat code for this game happens to be–change.

Everyone finds themselves stuck at one point or the other–in a deadlock between how things are and how they should be. Some of us don’t like our habits and some of us don’t like ourselves. As thinking, contemplating beings, we often think about changing. But then as thinking, contemplating beings, we also ruminate about the implications of change and if it is even possible. A plethora of thoughts restricts us from changing. The uprising of our limiting thoughts often begins with: I wish I had better grades in college. I wish I hadn’t gotten married so young. I wish I had never started smoking. I wish I had taken better care of my skin. And ending with: It’s too late now. What’s done is done. I must live with the decisions I have made.

We counter and recounter ourselves to the extent of either getting bored from all the thinking or wishing for a time machine to go back in time and undo a bunch of stuff. Meanwhile, listlessness sets up house as we moon over the time gone by and the chances lost. And all this because, between changing and staying put we always choose the latter.

Change is scary. Stepping out of one’s safe albeit boring territory and diving into the unknown can be terrifying. But then, the flipside is scarier i.e. being stuck. This is where we need to realise that change is intrinsic to our existence. It is inevitable, and is in fact, the only thing that is constant. In the words of Heraclitus: “You cannot step into the same river twice.”