Living in status quo

The fear of change: that debilitating, crippling, paralysing fear over which even rational human beings have little control. We fear dismissing unsatisfactory employees, we hesitate to quit from an unfulfilling employment. Ever so often we keep ‘adjusting’ to the zillion unsatisfactory aspects that make life a living hell.Why do we do this? We behave like this because we are so unnaturally afraid of possible or imagined consequences any change may bring with it. We rarely imagine positive turnarounds. It is always a negative that clouds our judgement and compels us to rot in our own purgatory of stagnation.Couple of months ago, my trusted old housemaid had begun reporting late for work on a regular basis. I discovered she was also working at another apartment and bluffing me that of late she was unable to wake up on time every morning. I blew my top hoping that good lung power and vituperative vocabulary would check the rot and we return to utopia. How mistaken I was. The maid lashed back. Her temper and hackles raised, she told me she would quit working for me if I continued to be such a despotic employer. Now, I ought to have fired her right at that point but I didn’t. Warning bells started pealing in my head: “What if I couldn’t find a replacement?” Training a new maid -ahh what a nuisance!” “What if this maid managed to block out future applicants using her nefarious mafia network? “Even with such thoughts crowding my psyche I emboldened myself and stoutly dismissed her from further service to me. The maid, perhaps equally terrified of change, was at my front door the following morning, beseeching to be permitted to work at my house in spite of me being the veritable ‘monster’ in her analysis!I don’t know if this was a correct decision by both parties. But today, two months later, older and wiser perhaps, I believe both of us are privately glad that the ‘change’ failed to occur! Summing it up succintly are words from a poem by Glen Yarborough:The greatest adventure is there if you’re bold.Let go of the moment that life makes you hold.