I have been spending a lot of time thinking about a new opportunity. Something potentially exciting, something potentially fun, something potentially wonderful.
But also something potentially complicated, potentially full of drama, and potentially explosive and harmful.
We judge such things against what we already know, or have known. How much is x like y?
It is easy to stay stuck in something we already know. Something we have become comfortable with and know how to handle and what to expect.
It is easy to crave what we once had and once enjoyed, and to get stuck in that, rather than take a chance on something new. To see if the grass is greener.
It is tough because sometimes something new reminds us of something old - something we may not have anymore outside our memory, but may want or wish we still had. Will this something new ever live up to our idealized memories? Is it fair to compare?
Maybe not. But we do. It's the only way we humans can process new information and new things, to compare them and understand them within the experience that we have already had.
It can make something new bittersweet if we're not careful.
I think we are supposed to find a way to treasure the past, but embrace the future. When we get married, the tradition is to wear something old, and something new. In Girl Scouts, we sing the song "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold."
The cool thing, though, is that over time, those "silver" friends become "gold", so it is worthwhile to take chances, to try something new, because one day, it will be something old which we cherish with fondness and perhaps a slight lonigng, too. And it may be what we use to compare the next new thing.
Embrace the opportunity. Because resistance is futile.
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