Change is uncomfortable. Change is fearful.

 Every now and then, there are some who truly enjoy change. But for the most of us, change is uncomfortable and fearful. Then, why is change uncomfortable? Why are we afraid of change?

 We prefer familiarity. And change is something that completely goes against that. So, the more accurate question would be: why do we like the familiar?

 Why do we like what's familiar? I can't say for others, but for me, it's because I can do what I want without much effort in an efficient way.

 I know exactly where my coffee beans are in my kitchen when I wake up in the morning to make coffee. I also know how many seconds I need to press the button on the grinder for it to ground the beans to the level that I like. I know how much water to put in and when to make the coffee for me to leave home at exactly when I want. Being able to enjoy good coffee without much effort on the way to school is no small happiness. It gives me the sense of a good start in the morning and it feels like a bonus of rewarding myself ahead of any unpredictable events that may occur during the day.

 Once, I was on a business trip. Breakfast was included, so I went downstairs to eat but I had not been prepared for there being no coffee. I had a couple of cups of fermented tea, but no coffee. I left the hotel early to get to my appointment ahead of schedule, but I was too early. I looked around for a coffee place to get my morning coffee and ended up being late for my meeting. Going to unfamiliar and new places makes us uncomfortable and things may go wrong.

 Life is a chain of us trying to achieve want we want. And we seek for the best way possible to achieve that goal. We confirm the best way to get to where we want by continuously modifying our ways through experience and make it a routine or a habit. This gives us convenience and comfort. Change breaks that routine and makes our lives uncomfortable again. But saying that we should enjoy change? It is such a strange order.

 The problem is in the fact that the ups and downs in life are not that simple. We know this very well. Life doesn't just give us things we are familiar with. Change comes in all shapes and forms from inside and outside.

 We reject the familiar from within us.
 We don't like to go to the same restaurant again and again even if it guarantees a certain level of taste. We seek someplace new and sometimes fail. It's a small price we pay to experience various food and taste. There are many other similar examples like this.

 We travel to new and unfamiliar places to break away from our everyday life. We deliberately seek chaos and unfamiliarity to the level we can handle. We pay money and bear the uncomfortable going to places we wouldn't live at, but they are beautiful because they are different. We enjoy them because they are different.

 There are conditions to enjoying change. First, it must be change that was triggered by ourselves. In other worlds, it must be change that we wanted. Second, we must be able to control the scope and degree of the change. If the change exceeds to more than we can handle, we start to reject that change. For example, if your travel budget exceeds your original plan or if you have to wait in line for much more than you expected to get into a restaurant, that trip becomes no longer fun.

 The common element behind the two conditions is the power of control. Change that I want to bring and the change that I can control. All this has to be under our control for us to enjoy that certain change. Then, we need to ask ourselves this: am I strong enough? We need to think about the power of control we can demonstrate in the world.

 Change that comes from outside ourselves is a bit different. Because the change was triggered by something external, it is not a change that we sparked or a change that we wanted. This kind of change is not under our control, which makes us mostly uncomfortable and fearful. Sometimes, change triggered from outside is exactly the change we wanted. This is what we call luck. It is not easy to be lucky. And luck is also something that is out of our control. When we do not like the change that was triggered from outside, we resist. We resist because we think that we can stop the change from happening by resisting or that we can turn things back to before the change. We think that we have that power. Here, we must ask ourselves again: am I strong enough? This question is important.

 It would be sad if you were to resist against change because you overestimated your strength. That resistance would be useless. For example, it would be useless for me to try to become a great football player like Park Jisung or Son Heungmin. I don't have that ability, that strength. Clinging onto trying to achieve the impossible is tough on you and the people around you. This is when we need to think rationally. If your best friend sets on achieving an impossible goal, it is your responsibility to give him or her your honest opinion.

 Does that sound like defeat to you? Does that mean we should just give up because we are weak? Must we accept that some things are not under our control? These are good questions.

 Resistance that will inevitably fail is not always meaningless. Sometimes there is meaning in resistance itself. If whatever it is you are trying to protect against change is of more value than anything else, that resistance in itself is beautiful. Trying to achieve or protect the impossible can have more meaning than achieving something easy. Here, there is another important question we must ask. Is what we are trying to protect that much worth it?

 Thoughts around change must come with thoughts about our strength and value. Are there values that we must protect at all cost despite the changes we face? And do I have the strength and ability to reject a certain change?

 As you might have guessed, there aren't so many noble values to protect. While at the same time, it is not easy to be strong enough to reject change. It may sound depressing, but this is the reality. Then, what should we do? In most cases, we cannot but accept change. Change comes and sweeps us away even if we don't want to. Resisting against the unavoidable is painful.

 So, how about changing our attitude towards change as it is something inevitable? What about trying to enjoy change? Why not think about change as a foreign country, a place that we might not want to live forever but is worth the visit because it is something new? How about opening up ourselves to change?

 There is a reason I am using this metaphor again at the end of this column. Change towards the better doesn't cause problems. It is the change towards the worse that we mostly resist. Change that we must fear is usually a change for the worse.

 And in this case, can we still say that we should enjoy change? I would like to propose that we take a step towards that change because it is change that we can't avoid anyway. Let's try to open up to change even if that change is painful. After all, the world changes, and we don't have the strength to stop it.

 Fortunately, there is a sense of warning but also encouragement behind the sentiment of saying we must enjoy change. It is a warning of telling us that good things don't last forever, so we should learn to let go. On the other hand, it also sends us a message of encouragement as bad things shall also pass and situation will improve. What goes around comes around. Let's enjoy change.