We often misjudge the relationship between cause and effect.

I have been fine being lazy all my life, but since I started exercising, it’s one injury after the other.

I have always had a job, but since immigrants started pouring into our country, I cannot find anything that’s worth my time.

I have never felt remorse from trying to be better than others, but since I began listening to people, now I am stuck and cannot progress in my career.

That’s what I have always done, so why should I change now?

The reasons we find to justify our behaviour, or the lenses we use to look into the past, are never neutral. We want to feel what we are doing or did is ok, and we do our best to find reasons not to have to change.

The world around us, though, does not matter about cause and effect. Time passes, societies evolve, technology progresses, relationships degrade, people leave, and we might very easily find ourselves in a world that we struggle to comprehend.

And at this very moment, we have a choice. We can find fake comfort in the stories we have told ourselves so far or we can go out with an open heart to find new stories.

I’ll go back to being lazy to make sure I continue staying healthy or I’ll continue exercising, taking into account the fact my body is not used to it, and I might have to take it easier in the beginning.

I’ll fight against immigration to make sure there’s a job for me or I’ll check if I can update my skills to better match the needs of the modern world.

I’ll stop listening and caring about people so to make sure I can get an edge or I’ll make an attempt to help people be better at what they are doing, and who knows what opportunities might open up for me.

If you are brave enough to choose what’s new, that does not mean you have to repudiate the old at the same time. It is part of you, of the person you have become, and there’s no reason to reject of forget it.

Just don’t build around yourself a prison made of what’s been. Use it as a stepping stone to leap into what will be.