Changing your spots

Change is the only constant in life, said someone very profound once upon a time in history. So why are so many of so afraid of it?

When I was a child, I was moved around a lot of the time. Leaving one School meant leaving behind friends which meant starting all over again. I think there were eight moves in total. No matter how many times I moved though, I couldn’t seem to work out where exactly I fit into the school yard hierarchy. School children can be cruel and new kids were the zoo animals of the play ground. Everyone is interested, but no one wants to get to close. You know, in case the new kid bites or something. It happened once.

By about the fifth move, I decided to change my persona. I was sick of being the new kid who the teacher palmed off to the girl who ate her scabs or the boy who wanted to play chess every single recess and lunch. It was a big decision for a ten  year old lass, but it was one I decided needed to happen.

It wasn’t difficult or anything. I mean, no one at this school knew who I was so I adopted this new outlandish personality and to my surprise, it worked. This is a true story by the way.

For the first time in my life, I had bunch of friends who didn’t want to show me their comic books or constantly speak in Klingdon (even as a Star Trek fan, this can get super annoying very fast…)

All was well. Until I had to move back to my old school.

You’ve changed

I was so comfortable in my new identity that I had totally forgotten I had created it as an social experiment (unbeknownst to me at the time) and after moving back to a school I had already attended for a few years, the first words I was greeted with by almost anyone was “you’ve changed”.

I immediately perceived this as a negative thing. People who change are fake. People who change are hiding something. People who change are unreliable and have no sense of self identity.

Maybe that rings true for some people but I felt a lot more confident with who I was at the time, compared to how I had felt before. My old friends however, thought otherwise. Their comments made me feel as though I was a leopard masquerading as a cheetah. Or worse, a kitten masquerading as a lion.

They probably didn’t mean anything by it. I mean, we were all just primary school children after all. It was like being the zoo animal all over again. Not many people want to get too close to the unfamiliar.

And that is exactly what I was to them. My new personality had made me different and that’s when I realised, people are afraid of what they don’t know.

In this photo:

Minskat Copenhagen Malou clutch

Who you are is whoever you want to be

Up until that realisation, it had felt like I done something wrong. Even though I was only barely eleven. I felt as though I was a fraud.

Despite all of this, I didn’t retreat back to who I used to be. After realising that people were more afraid of what they didn’t know than how I was actually acting, I told myself what my parents had told me all of twelve years of my life; you can be whoever the hell you want to be.

Like I mentioned before, change is the only true constant in life. Which is kind of ironic in a way. We are constantly evolving and transforming through lessons, experiences, different circumstances. It would be impossible and quite boring to stay the exact same person throughout our whole life.

For the first part of my school life, I was girl who would oblige to everything the teacher said, share my lunch with kids I didn’t even like and accept my role as ‘it’ in every game of chasey. After my self development revamp, I decided I would no longer be the person who was too nice to object. When I was met with hurtful comments about being completely different person, I realised that it wasn’t that I had changed, but the fact that I was no longer living my life in a way that fit theirs.

Change or Groth?

Or both?

These days, there’s so much negativity about changing who you are, even when the bookshops are stacked to the ceiling with books on self help and self development. Is there really any difference between the two?

And ever more so, do you even think that people really can change?

I do. I think that as long as we’re growing and learning, we continue to change and I think that, as long as you’re comfortable with who you are, or who you’re turning into (as long as it’s not a murderer or something) then you shouldn’t feel guilty about evolving.

So, what do you think of change? Does it make you run for the hills or do you embrace it with open arms and a welcome beverage? I would love to know your thoughts, so leave a comment!