the only thing that can change your life

One of the things I love about works of fiction is how people who analyze these works can easily pinpoint to a moment of climax.

That instant that slices the life of the protagonist into distinct 'before' and 'after' phases.

That moment in time when everything changes and there is no going back for the protagonist after that.

Perhaps the reason I love this clear bisection so much is because of its utter absence in real life.

In my own life, I've had moments when I've felt that this is it, everything could change from hereon.

But then a new day would dawn, some of that excitement would begin to wane, and I'd come to the realization that life on the other side of that moment is different in some ways but also exactly the same in many other ways.

Why nothing seems to change even after moments of big transitions

Consider this. My contemporary fantasy novel, Dying Wishes, was a finalist for the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the Speculative Fiction category.

When that nomination came through, I thought "This is it! This is the shot in the arm I needed. Now I'll never have to worry about whether or not I'm a good writer. See? I'm a finalist for such a prestigious prize."

That feeling perhaps lasted for a few days. A week, at most. After that I easily fell back into my old patterns of worrying more than writing, of feeling that my work wasn't worthwhile, yada yada yada.

Not to mention that when I didn't win the prize, I took it as the ultimate nail in the coffin of my writing career, the significance of that nomination entirely diminished and completely forgotten!

Now that I think about it, even the big moments that we think define our lives and completely change the course of our life's trajectory — falling in love, marriage, becoming a parent — don't actually crack our lives open into two.

Sure, the external circumstances change, that too in a big way. If you were single, now you suddenly have a partner. If you were a couple, now you suddenly have a wee infant to look after. Or you're out on a grand vacation, a year backpacking around the world.

The highs of these moments lasts for a while, no doubt. We do become new people for some time. Buoyed with a sense of change, of joy and unbridled optimism, we ride on that wave of happiness and come to believe that we can conquer the world, that nothing petty can topple us from the throne of open-heartedness we're now perched upon.

And then something happens. Maybe you're late for work. Maybe you spilled coffee on yourself en route to a job interview. Maybe someone snarled at you on the street for no good reason.

And we go back to being our small, scared, insecure selves. Not only are we toppled off the throne, we also find ourselves thrashing and flailing about in the muck we've fallen into, not knowing how to pull ourselves out.

In these moments of difficulty, our old patterns of behaviours and emotions hold us in their clutch once more, bobbing us about like a puppet with no control over what it says or does.

No wonder then, that despite the seemingly big moments in our lives, nothing seems to change. Everything seems to fall back into the same inane patterns created by our mental selves, over and over again, no matter what changes on the outside.

So, what can we change instead?

Every self-help guru has drilled into us ad nauseam that while we cannot always choose the circumstances of our lives, we can always choose our reactions to them.

I agree with this. But that is not the point of my essay today.

While it's true that we can choose our reactions, have you noticed how we are able to do this sometimes? Say once. Twice. And it feels great.

But the third time it feels as though it requires too much effort from our end to even make that choice. It feels a whole lot easier and comfortable and safer to simply yell or scream or tune off or lapse into whatever mode of distraction we've gotten accustomed to over years and years.

We give up trying to change for a while ... and then sick of our own patterns, we get back on the bandwagon of self-improvement and growth.

The one factor that makes all the difference is this: time.

It takes an insane amount of time to truly change ourselves and our lives.

In this world of instant gratification, celebrations of seemingly overnight success, and showy displays of fame and achievements, we often forget how — for the average person — it can take a really, really long time to see significant changes in themselves and their lives.

I first became aware of emotionally healthy responses to life circumstances shortly before D was born. It has taken me nine years to get to a place where I can say that about 90% of the time, my responses are calm, my self-talk is encouraging and kind, and I'm able to discern when to show up and when to rest.

Is it to do with age? Or life experience?

I don't know.

I suppose the more time we spend doing something, the better we get at it.

But often this is construed as follows:

Say, if we spend 1 hour a day practising playing the piano, then we could reasonably expect to reach a certain level of expertise in 3 years.

So we rationalize that if we were to spend 3 hours a day instead on practise, then we'd reach that same level of expertise in 1 year.

While this may hold true for various skills — of course, there'd be limits beyond which this rule wouldn't hold owing to fatigue, exhaustion, in line with the laws of diminishing returns — what trips us up in life in this.

We cannot condense 3 years of life experience into 1 year in order to experience three-fold growth in that period of time.

What we learn over 3 years is meant to take 3 years of time. And, I believe, this process happens chronologically. Who I am today, in mid-2025, is vastly different than who I was two years ago.

So if my mid-2023-self were to write a post in today's circumstances, she'd have a very different take on life and on this very topic.

Somehow we all seem to be in a great hurry to achieve growth and accolades, to reach that state of everlasting inner peace, and then go on to define the rest of our lives based on that moment of instant transformation.

Perhaps, then, the questions to ask ourselves are these: What's the great rush? What are we in a tearing hurry for?

When we find that we really have no answers to these questions, we'd be able to let go a little more. Breathe a little deeper.

And trust that time, and time alone, will bring us the clarity and change that we seek.

If you liked this piece, you will find echoes of it in my fantasy fiction short story, The Mind Meddler.

It is available to download for free, alongside other great books, in a promotion featuring interesting, offbeat tales: The Weird. The Strange. The Uncanny.

The promo ends on 5 July! Be sure to grab your free copy before then.