Stability.  We all want it.  We want our days to be predictable and even a bit mundane.

“Wait a second,” you may be thinking, “I want excitement in my life.  I don’t want it to be boring.”

Unless you’re name is Evel Knievel, I doubt that very much.  Don’t get me wrong, we love the illusion of danger and excitement – that’s why roller coasters are so popular.  But we don’t really want true danger.  If we did, why can’t we walk outside without SPF 50 sunscreen?  Why are we worried about eating non-organic food?

We want excitement as long as its highly controlled and completely safe.

As a society we’ve worked hard to build this cocoon of “safety.”  We wear seat belts and helmets.  We avoid caffeine, fat, and cholesterol.  We live in air conditioned houses.  Travel to work in heated cars.  Sit on padded chairs.  All very safe things to do.  And very smart things.  I personally love air conditioning.

The problem is, we’ve confused safety with living, and freedom with the status quo.  Somewhere along the way we started believing that as long as you go through the motions nothing needs to change.  We’ve adopted the philosophy of “don’t rock the boat.”

Yet the reality is our lives are filled with change.  Every day something changes.  We just don’t notice it.  This is why we wake up one day and think “when did my hair get so gray?” or  “How did I gain this much weight?”  All of that didn’t happen over night, it took time.  That’s the Myth of Stability at work.

Change is part of the human condition.

1.  Tsunami in Indonesia – No one had any idea what was about to happen.  But before many knew it, walls of 100 ft waves were crashing down on their cities.

2.  Bubonic plague – 4 out of every 10 people died within 3 years.  Can you imagine if 40% of your city’s population died?

3.  Dinosaur Extinction – These massive creatures ruled the earth for a hundred million years.  Yet now we can barely even imagine their size and power.  All gone due to a cataclysmic event, with barely a trace.

No one was expecting any of these things.  And you probably aren’t expecting change to happen in your life.  But I guarantee that change is right around the corner.  Will it be an illness?  A death in the family?  A lost job?  A promotion?  Winning the lottery?  A new baby?

I know this seems counter-intuitive.  But trust me when I say there is no such thing as stability.  It’s a myth.  Even as I write this we are in the midst of a recession.  It’s so bad that some people are suggesting we may never get out of it.  And if we do the most pessimistic guesses say a full recover won’t be for 10 or 15 years.  Ironically it wasn’t too long ago that people were claiming an economic collapse would never happen.

But all recessions end in one way or another.  Because stability (good or bad) is a myth.

The reason I write all of this isn’t to stress you out.  Or to make you nervous.  There’s enough fear in the world as it is.  Instead, it’s to let you know meaning doesn’t come from what you do, it comes from who you are.

Unfortunately most of us believe we can get our meaning from our work, our families, or even our possessions.  Yet all of those things are temporary.  All of those things can break or disappear.  Because that’s the nature of the world we live in.

photo provided by flickr