Moving On

This is my last week in my current post. I’m not sure why it would happen today, but this morning a sense of loss and excitement settled on me like ash; almost imperceptibly weightless yet stark against clean clothes. It’s an odd sensation. I suppose it could be fear.

Experiencing this sensation led me to think about change more generally and that, sometimes, most odious of human tasks, moving on.

We move on from all sorts of things: friends, places, school, college, environments, illusions, ignorance, pain, happiness and misery. Those who have shed unrequited tears know that moving on is sometimes painful, those who have escaped know it is sometimes joyous in the extreme.

Generally, despite the improvement it may lead to, moving on, which I suppose is a euphemsism for change, is an unpleasant experience to contemplate. There are all sorts of unknown variables in any change no matter how small or insignificant it may be. There are, of course, those who welcome the churning twisting experience and describe it as fun or thrilling, while all the while there are far more who would rather things stayed just as they are, no matter how inferior present circumstances might be.

Think about some of the expressions which address concerns about change and moving on; better the devil you know than the devil you don’t; look before you leap; out of the frying pan and into the fire; fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and so on.

If you searched the internet for something along these lines you would find a sizeable number of websites promoting themselves as the exclusive home to the silver bullet solution. Even Roosevelt had a stab at it with his famous remark which shall serve today as my conclusion. Although I might remark, as a preamble, that to my mind is entirely applicable to our present topic, the fear of change. It’s not the fear of anything other than changing circumstances, and it is due to this ungrounded, unidentified nature that we fear change so much and so generally.

“[L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts…”

Word of the Day: Cainotophobia
- noun

1 – An abnormal fear of newness