Do we crave stability or do we want change?

Let’s think about it. A lot of psychologists talk about a thing called stagnation. Erik Erikson, in his psychosocial stages of development, places that stage just before old age. His stage of generativity vs. stagnation describes how people sit back and think about what they have achieved in their life and if they feel like they haven’t achieved something or haven’t made a recognizable change, they feel stuck. Stagnant.

Abraham Maslow talks about something similar. In his stage of "self-actualization," people look back on their life, and if they feel they've made a change and achieved something, they attain the satisfaction of the highest level of human need. Other psychologists echo the same idea.

If looking back and weighing the changes that we have made in life is so important then I think change is important right? But it's also true that change is very hard to deal with.

Recently I went through a major life change: I moved out of my hometown for studies. This was a change I had been working hard to achieve for a long time. I am finally at this stage where I am studying what I want. I thought once I achieved this, a lot of issues and a lot of things would be easier to handle, a lot of things would be easier to let go of, and I wouldn’t be struggling with the same things anymore. Turns out I was completely wrong.

At the end of the day when I sit by myself, I still feel exactly as I did back home. The things I thought I would leave behind by changing cities are still here. Nothing has changed. This gave me an insight —

No amount of change guarantees change.

But it's also true that if nothing stays the same, if everything changes at the same time, we would lose our minds. So, humans keep finding stability somewhere: in hobbies, in short-term relationships, in friendships, or even in something as small as our daily routine. We yearn for stability, and I don’t think it’s wrong.

Change can be enormous or tiny, it’s like a vast ocean. If we want to cross it, we need a life jacket or we need to learn how to swim. Now as learning to swim takes time, we need the life jacket to get us through the ocean and onto the shore, where we can finally sit and appreciate how far we have come. As it’s said —

And as I’ve mentioned, I like stability. When I sit back and reflect on my day, I feel like I have not changed I am still the same person as I was, and I don’t think that would ever change. Even when it pains to think that I worked so hard to just leave the things behind I think this is also something that’s keeping me sane.

It isn't just about the self, either. This is the stability that we search in our partners too. We want them to stay the same, that no matter what happens out there, if we come back to them at the end of the day, they'll still be who they were. This is the stability that we all crave in our lives.

So the question "Do we want stability or change?" isn't really an either-or. Change is essential to living, but stability is what lets us live it.

They are not opposites. Change without inner stability changes nothing.

Change and stability both matter, and it’s important for us to experience both to find balance between them, to hold them together.

Change is the constant dark sky. Stability is the stars that provide us the light to navigate through the darkness.

I love to read but that love was not always present in me. It took time to get into it. At first, when I was maybe 10 or 11, it used to take me months, sometimes years, to finish a book. As i grew older the time decreased and the interest increased.

Reading is a bliss that everyone should experience.

My rule for reading

I read even when I don't have time, even in a reading slump, even when I travel or I'm sick. My rule is simple: at least 5 lines a day.

As we psychology students say, keep the goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). I know all days are not the same and I won’t feel the same level of motivation every day, hence: 5 lines, that’s my goal.

Why I always have a book on me

I am someone who would always be seen holding a book, nowadays people call this behavior “performative” but I don't care.

Having a book by my side at all times helps me reduce my attention toward my phone, just like having a water bottle near you helps you drink more water. It also helps me protect myself from consuming unnecessary or negative content, and it gives me something to pick up every now and then even if I read a line and close it off just like how we do with our phones.

We pick up our phones when we're bored, sad, anxious, anything and we scroll two or three reels, and put it back down.

You know why we feel a little at ease from our negative emotions that we were feeling before we scrolled?

Our brain gets distracted from the emotion we were feeling. We get hit by a sudden dopamine dose, plus it's also Classical Conditioning. We have conditioned our brain to feel better after we have scrolled or fidgeted on the phone for a while.

This stems from our problem of having our phones in our reach every second of the day. We have stopped sitting with our emotions. Whatever happens, we pick up our phone. Even for journaling and note-taking, people reach for their phones.

Imagine instead of picking up your phone every 5 seconds, you picked up a book? You would experience something that is not harmful for your brain (unless you pick up a very disturbing book). You would experience a different story. You would not end your critical thinking.

Read what feels good to you.

I have spent years figuring out what is something I like to read, what is something that I enjoy, what is something that makes me feel good, what is something that makes me look forward to completing my 5 lines a day goal!

I have read a lot of genres of books: fiction, self-help, biographies, storybooks, horrors, thrillers, mysteries, romance, spiritual. It took time to find mine. And I've come to believe this:

Novels will teach you more than any self-help book would ever because your brain functions on learning from stories more than instructions.

I read somewhere that our brains basically live out what characters live out, the neurons don't know the difference between watching someone walk through a door and doing it yourself. So when you read, your brain feels like you are the character. Pretty cool, right?

On the other hand, reading self-help books mostly engage parts of the brain that process abstract, declarative information — the same system you’d use to read a manual, hence reading self-help books becomes boring while reading novels is more fun.

Reading a novel and learning about the characters help you increase your critical thinking. You start questioning their choices, answers, actions, words, movements and everything else. You put yourself in their shoes and start to consciously or subconsciously think about what the different ways to deal with this situation are apart from the one used by the character.

It builds real life skills: empathy, reading between the lines, analysis, and critical thinking.

Read with a pencil in your hand

I just want you to pick a book, pick anything if you are not sure about the genre that you will like. Then sit with a pencil in hand and start underlining the lines that made you feel something, it can be any emotion, sad, happy, excited, wholesome, annoyed, angry, nervous, guilty, anything.

This will help you feel grounded and in the moment and you can also get in touch with your emotions this way.

When I open my already-read books now and find lines underlined or small quotes or meanings of the words written in the corner it makes me feel like I have lived.

That feeling lets me relive a single emotion I felt the first time I read that book, again and again. Each time I read those annotated lines, I feel them from a different perspective. I have grown up from the time I first underlined that line, not just physically, but emotionally, psychologically, mentally. The circumstances may have changed too, and I feel my own progress. I remember how I felt while reading that sentence or writing in those corners and I can compare them to my emotions now.

Read, at all times, at any moment

Life is already very short and unpredictable. Getting to live a moment twice is a gift. Life doesn't give many chances to taste it twice.

And so I say…

Read, at all times, at any moment, read.

“I am a museum of everyone that I have loved”

This is a quote that is very close to me as it shows a part of me, a part that turns each relationship, friendship, and even a fleeting encounter into an exhibit; in the gallery of who I am. I read a theory somewhere, Continuing Bonds Theory, the theory explains how having an internal bond with someone that you have lost is not unhealthy or bad. Modern bereavement research says we don’t detach from people we’ve lost (to death, breakup, or drift) we actually maintain an internal relationship with them indefinitely. This actually made something inside me feel better. It felt like I don’t have to rush my grief, I don’t have to torture myself to leave the person behind and forget everything, it’s not wrong to love them throughout my life, I can keep them connected to me in ways that won’t make it difficult to move ahead.

When I used to read this quote anywhere, I would immediately see flashbacks of every habit, every word that I use, every gesture that I have learned from one of my loved ones but you see this becomes very problematic when I start to take on the bad habits, words, gestures, the bad self-talk, self-hate and things that pollute my museum. It took me time to finally understand how this museum works; I can put the things that are not for the museum and are for me to feel alone in the storage and never retrieve it, this is my power.

When I understood this, I felt like I am forgetting my loved ones or maybe I am somehow cheating on them but it was never that way. They still exist but just not on exhibit, they stay in the storage room just for me, nobody else sees them. I thought love meant keeping every piece in display forever but that museum would be so hard to maintain, choosing what of them I let shape the front rooms of myself is also a way of loving them. If someone ever loved me so much that I have displayed them in my museum means they would have wanted me to love myself the way they once did. I think this choosing is not betrayal. It is the only kind of love that survives contact with time. The storage now not just contains the bad stuff but some of my core memories with the people I have lost.

Now, when I catch myself in a gesture I didn’t invent like a laugh, a phrase, an expression, a way of loving — I don’t flinch. I just step into the storage room. I can sit there for as long as I want. I can laugh again with my grandfather. I can hug her once more. I can walk with the person who changed my music. I can sit with the friend I couldn’t save, and finally say the things I owed them. I can experience the guilt that I still carry. The storage room is mine. It will never be on display again and it doesn’t need to be, to still be love.