CAMDEN — By PATRIC FLANNIGAN
STAFF WRITER
A couple of weeks ago I turned 30 years old.
All that day, there were two thoughts on my mind. One being, “Wow, I am so blessed that God saw fit for me to see thirty. So blessed to have my family and friends and to be able to say I made it another year.” On the other hand I thought, “Since I’m 30 now, I wonder if that means I’m too old to quote Thanos.”
Guess what? I’m not.
As Thanos said in Avengers: Infinity War, “Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.”
There are things regarding our future that we don’t have the answers to, stuff that we are uncertain about and events that we know are on the horizon that we have no way to plan for.
In fact, if you think about the future too long, you can scare yourself and even worry yourself sick.
In those times, it’s important to rely on your faith. Think about the times in your past when the future was uncertain and yet somehow, you are still here.
True enough, life will throw you a curve ball sometimes but it's up to you how you respond to it. You can allow it to change you, or allow it to evolve you.
In some cases, change can be good. Change by definition is to make or become different. But sometimes, good people change to being bad people. Good fruit changes when it becomes rotten. There are a lot of cases when change is good, but understand change doesn’t always trend upward.
Evolution does however. Not evolution as in the bogus theory that humans came from monkeys, but evolution as in the act of developing.
The way I look at it, change is on the surface where as evolution is on the inside. Change occurs when you allow the things on the outside - gossip, worries, peers etc., - to affect the way you act towards people. For example, you wake up in a good mood and look at your phone to discover it’s raining outside. Now you can’t wear the new shoes you got for Christmas and you have to put on boots. Now you are stomping around the work place in a bad mood because you allowed something small to change how you feel.
Someone who has evolved would respond differently. They would recognize, they don’t want to wear those shoes to work in the first place. Those shoes would work better for date night or for a club meeting. They’d show up to work and smile the whole time.
A caterpillar doesn’t change into a butterfly, it evolves into one. It uses its struggles, insecurities and channels them into the right avenues to become stronger.
So in my short but fortunate 30 years of life I’ve learned to always try to evolve. When you face uncertainties in your future, focus on evolving rather than changing. Allow the things you go through to help you become better, not bitter.