Let It Change You

A friend recently reminded me that this month marks five years since the start of the pandemic. Then she told a beautiful story about a man who gave her this advice about disaster: “Let it change you,” he said. “Don’t try to be the same person you were before.”

We often think of freedom as the absence of limitation. So when the phone rings or someone gets sick or someone fails to be there for us, we think, “Stop limiting me! Stop taking away my freedom!”

But limitation is baked into the structure of existence. All pleasures stop working at some point. And the longer we live, the more things there are that we will never do again for the first time: first kisses, first trips to Spain, meeting our firstborn for the first time. Whatever you do will change you forever.

You have to see this. And you have to see the suffering that comes from holding on, from not wanting to change. You are not the same person you were when you started reading these words. You can’t go back to the beginning.

Have you ever returned to something you loved as a kid and realized it’s much smaller than you remembered? For me, there’s a hill in Prospect Park that I once thought was a mountain. But that’s what growing up means, seeing that things are smaller, more limited than you remember.

You can yearn for what’s gone, or you can see that things are smaller because you are called to something bigger. Whatever you’re facing, let it change you. You are right where you are supposed to be.

Painting by Terry Matassoni