Learning to accept change has made me happier.

We all have, at one time or another, watched as something happened in someone else’s life and thought “that could never happen to me.” It doesn’t matter if it was a good or bad situation; it was something that would have been just so out of the ordinary in our own lives that we believed that it could never happen to us.

Well, the odds are that the person to whom it happened probably thought the very same thing.

That is one of the amazing things about life: it is unpredictable. Of course it is true that the majority of our days are uneventful, follow a basic routine, and are quickly forgotten because they were so unremarkable. But every once in a while we experience a day that disrupts all of that. And how we react to that disruption makes all the difference.

I had such a day a few years ago. It was December 2011, just a few days before Christmas, and I was driving to work just like any other day.

And then it happened.

If it hadn’t been for the county sheriff driving behind me on the freeway, I would have never known what “it” really was. It turned out that “it” was a seizure. I had it while I was driving 60 miles per hour in rush hour traffic. Miraculously, I hit no other cars, only the railing on a bridge which kept me from plunging into the lake below. Instead, I bounced off the railing, went airborne, nearly flipped over, landed upright, then came to and kept driving.

When the sheriff pulled me over and described what he had seen, I really only believed him because of the extensive damage to my car which somehow was still drivable. After extensive tests and an overnight stay in the hospital, they found nothing wrong with me. But although physically I was still the same, almost everything else about me had changed.

After that day, I learned to stop saying “that could never happen to me.” After all, why couldn’t it happen to me? What makes me different from anybody else? What makes me less prone to misfortune than the next person? Similarly, what makes me less deserving of good fortune than my fellow man? Nothing, because the truth is that nobody “deserves” what happens to them. It just happens.

Great things will happen to really bad people, and terrible things will happen to really good people. That’s just the way life is: unpredictable.

I have since learned to be much more accepting of change than I once was. In the four years since my seizure, there has been a lot of change in my life. Suspended driver’s licenses, deaths of loved ones, layoffs, births, financial challenges, business opportunities, reconnections with old friends. Basically the sorts of things that can happen to everybody. Even to me. And because I have learned to accept change as it happens, they have all been much easier to deal with.

I have learned that there is a big difference between accepting change and giving up. There are many things that will happen in our lives that are direct results of choices we have made and, more importantly, of the effort that we have put in. These are events that could have been prevented and may still be alterable. But there are also many things, like a seizure on a freeway during rush hour, that are not preventable. And the many repercussions that will follow these unpreventable events will also be unpreventable themselves.

What we must learn to do under these circumstances is differentiate between what we can try to improve, and what we must learn to accept. Because if we cannot differentiate, we will try to change things that are outside of our control and needlessly frustrate ourselves with our futile attempts. Also, we will fail to try to improve those situations that are under our control and will miss out on better outcomes to negative circumstances.

One word that I have made a part of my vocabulary over the last couple of years is equanimity.

It means the ability to maintain level and even emotion under situations of stress. It is the ability to remain calm and stable regardless of what life may bring your way. I have learned the virtue of equanimity to be an enormous benefit when facing unexpected changes in my life.

I have learned that regardless of whether I can alter or improve a situation that I am facing, by remaining level headed and calm, and by controlling my emotions, I am always able to handle the situation more effectively. More importantly, regardless of the final outcome, I am able to remain and come out happier through it all. By accepting the unexpected changes in my life, I can protect my happiness by avoiding undue stress and tumultuousness.

I am still experiencing repercussions from my seizure. Last year, when I went to renew my driver’s license, I found out that my account had been flagged “for medical reasons.” What should have been a quick and easy renewal, turned into a long wait with an unknown outcome while the DMV officer called a superior at the state capital. In the end my license was renewed, but while I waited for the decision I decided to accept whatever the eventual outcome was with equanimity.

I have accepted that my life is now forever changed because of that one incident. But rather than enumerate all the difficulties that I have faced as a result of my seizure, I choose to focus on how lucky I am. I am lucky that I did not hit any vehicles and injure anyone. I am lucky that I did not go over the railing and plunge into the lake. I am lucky that the sheriff was behind me to witness the accident and tell me what happened. I am lucky that I was unharmed. I am lucky that I am alive.

 

Author: Daniela Naidu

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Image: Lokesh Dhakar/Flickr