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SECRET NUMBER THREE Change Is Inevitable, So Stop Resisting and Surrender to Life’s Flow

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

ANONYMOUS

There is one underlying reality present everywhere in our physical universe: change. Day turns into night and night turns back into day; summer turns into autumn and then winter. The cells of your body are all changing at this very moment. In fact, there is nothing about the universe that isn’t changing right now. Change is inevitable, and therefore everything in life is impermanent, and constantly moving. Nothing stays the same for very long.

Nature doesn’t complain about the fact that it is expected to constantly go through changes. For instance, can you imagine Nature saying, “You know what, I’m getting awfully tired of having to go through these seasons every year—it’s exhausting. I think this year I’ll skip winter and spring and autumn, and just stay in summer for a while,” or “I’m so dizzy from these planets always revolving, round and round. I need a rest! I think I’ll stop spinning just for a week or two.” No, life flows on in an ever-changing succession of miraculous transformations.

We human beings, on the other hand, have a different attitude toward change: we’re not always crazy about it. In fact, often we do everything we can to resist change and stay where we are, no matter how much we’re being pointed in a new direction.

Here’s one of my favorite anecdotes about change:

Jimmy had four pet goldfish that his parents bought him for his ninth birthday. Every night before he went to bed, he would watch the delicate, orange-colored fish swim round and round the small glass bowl they lived in. One day, he noticed that the water in the bowl looked kind of cloudy, and the glass was covered with a light film. Jimmy’s mom explained to him that this was natural—the goldfish bowl needed to be cleaned.

Jimmy knew how to clean the bowl. He’d seen his friend Howie do it. He filled up his bathtub with cool water, and then gently lowered the bowl into the tub, until the four goldfish swam out of the dirty bowl into the bathwater. Jimmy spent the next fifteen minutes scrubbing the glass bowl until it was sparkling clean. Finally, it was all ready.

As Jimmy knelt by the bathtub to retrieve his goldfish, he saw a strange sight: Even though the bathtub was over four feet long and three feet wide, the four goldfish were swimming round and round in a tiny circle, right where Jimmy had originally placed them.

“Mom,” yelled Jimmy, “come and look at the goldfish.” Jimmy’s mom came into the bathroom to see what all the fuss was about.

“Why are the fish swimming in a little circle when they have a whole tub?” Jimmy asked.

Jimmy’s mom smiled at her son and answered, “Because they don’t know they are in the tub. They think they are still at home in their tiny glass bowl That’s what they are used to.”

It’s true, isn’t it, that often you and I are not that different from Jimmy’s goldfish—even when we’re offered an opportunity to change, to grow, we may decide instead to remain the way we’ve been, living within our same little boundaries, swimming in our same little circles. We choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, the old over the new. We get attached to staying in our comfort zone and resist taking the risks and flowing with the changes that would force us to face the unknown. And sometimes even when life makes those changes for us, like those goldfish, we stubbornly try to hang on to our old realities and fight the transformation that is already taking place

How do many of us deal with our resistance to change? We do whatever we can to create certainty, security, a sense of being in control. We try to get everything in our lives all lined up and predictable. It’s as if we think: “O.K., first I’ll find a good job, then I’ll find the right partner, have kids, hopefully be able to buy a nice house, and then everything will be in place, and I’ll try my best to keep it that way for the rest of my life until I die.” Our years become defined by the predictability of routines to which we cling fiercely: “This is how we will celebrate the holidays, and this is where we will go on vacation, and this is what time we will eat dinner, and this is what fits in and what doesn’t. And please—no surprises—I don’t want any surprises. I want things to be nice and calm.”

How many times have you heard someone use these phrases, or even used them yourself?

“I don’t want to rock the boat.”

“Everything’s fine the way it is.”