It’s Monday morning. It’s time for breakfast, but you’ve run out of milk. You take a 15 minute detour to the grocery store to pick up a new gallon.

You head home. You drink some milk. You wake up the next day and drink the milk again. And the day after that, you drink some more. Then, you go on vacation for two weeks. When you come back, the milk smells funny. It’s sour. It’s separating. Your nose curdles as you sniff at it, and you immediately toss it. You don’t look back. You don’t lament over the milk. You don’t curl into a ball and submit yourself to sleepless nights thinking about the long lost milk. You simply run down to the grocery store and pick up a nice, new gallon of milk. And life goes on.

So why on earth can’t we follow the same procedure when it comes to other areas of life that are constantly changing? Why do we dwell, search, ponder, imagine, and worst of all, yearn for the past? Why can’t we toss aside our preconceived notions of happiness, why can’t we let things go? Why can’t we be as lighthearted about change as we are about running out to pick up a new gallon of milk?

Obviously the scenario I have presented above is kind of absurd. Comparing sour milk to change is an audaciously silly thing to do. But it kind of makes you think — kind of makes you put things into perspective a little bit. Because change is inevitable. It is unavoidable. You’re probably not going to be able to casually toss aside parts of your life as easily as a sour gallon of milk, but life staying static isn’t a thing that’s going to happen either. Your life is going to shed its skin multiple times. You will change. Your surroundings will change. Your goals will change. Your friends, your job, your apartment, your family, your health, your goals, your emotional state of mind — it’s all up for grabs. It’s one giant gamble, and the stakes are basically your life.

In the above scenario, the milk went bad. You simply threw it away. You didn’t problem solve, trying to optimize this irreversible situation. You didn’t try making it taste good again by adding sugar and spice. You didn’t save the gallon, letting it stink up your house. You didn’t complain to the manufacturers or create a media frenzy. Perhaps you even missed out on the new brand of milk that came out. It’s hormone free, it’s smoother, everyone is raving about it. But you’re busy throwing a tantrum over this other gallon of milk that went bad, so you don’t know it exists.

Now, I’m not saying adapting to change is as easy as this. Of COURSE it isn’t. Your emotional ties and level of time, commitment and dedication to a gallon of milk will never match that of anything else in your life that you really care about.

The thing is, what goes up must come down. Most good things go bad. And when it does, you need to take out the garbage to make room for new stuff, rather than let it clutter up your mind and make everything rancid. Things that shimmer start to fade (otherwise all of us ladies would be covered in glitter 24/7). This happens, dare I say, in EVERY aspect of life.

But human beings as a species are wired to adapt. People deal with crazy shit ALL the time, and they persevere. You read stories in the news every day of war ridden countries, and a 12 year old losing his entire family — and he has a shaky smile on his face as he wishes for a brighter future. If this kid can do it, we can ALL do it. Ok, this is getting deep — obviously our problems (for the most part) can’t come close to the problems of this child (really, we should feel the burden of this child's problems as our own because we all belong to each other, but that’s a conversation for a different day). And we can’t just disregard our issues and say they don’t matter because someone else’s issues are greater — that never works, and it shouldn’t work — it’s all relative. But that’s my point — the human mind is capable of EXTREME adaptation. You can condition your mind to think exactly what you want it to think, to feel exactly what you WANT it to feel. Most of us persevere. Of course, some of us fail and succumb to life’s demons. That is also inevitable. It might happen to you. It might happen to me. I can’t predict the future. I can just cross my fingers and hope for strength — if it eludes me, it eludes me. If I snap, I snap. But I hope it never happens and I hope I always bounce back.

We often hear the quote “When one door closes, another one opens”. It’s cliche, I know. And honestly it makes me want to vomit — the hopefulness of it is kind of annoying. How are you supposed to focus on shiny new opportunities and open doors when 75% of you is panicking about “never being this happy again” or “what if the new situation is terrible”? Well, let me tell you something. You’re not. You’re not going to be able to focus on anything good or positive coming out of change, especially if the change wasn’t initiated by you (i.e. someone breaking up with you vs. YOU breaking up with them; someone firing you vs. YOU quitting; someone creating an emotional barrier with you vs. YOU creating that barrier). It’s much, much harder to accept situational change when you aren’t driving the car and you feel like you’re a passenger not wearing a seat belt in a vehicle with a drunk driver going 150 miles an hour. You’re gripping onto the sides of the car FREAKING THE FUCK OUT.

The thing is, that’s life. It’s Darwinism. And for most of us, we are in fact the freaked out passenger that needs to continuously adapt to shitty situations. Life will kick you, punch you, slap you, laugh at you, mock you, demean you, psychologically fuck with you and then do it all over again. And unless you can figure out how to deal with that vicious cycle, you’re going to be screwed. You’re not a victim. You’re on the road just like the rest of us. Get in the car, or get run over. It’s up to you.

You have no idea what’s going to happen. Shit takes time. You might be miserable for five years, and then ten years later realize what the purpose of all that crap was. There is such a thing as delayed gratification. It’s annoying. But it exists.

The expectation that life will be reasonable, the expectation that the components that make up your existence will stay the same, is an expectation to immediately eliminate from your brain. Everything is temporary. You EXPECT milk to go bad, so when it does, you’re cool with it. You don’t question it. But, you don’t expect the unexpected. So what’s the key takeaway here? Start expecting crazy shit to happen all the time? Be paranoid, neurotic, on guard, suspicious? Start expecting everything to fall apart? No. Of course not. Don’t be completely insane (easier said than done, haha). But maybe start thinking of it as a quota you know you’ll have to meet. A dose of change that you know is coming at some point — you don’t know what form, or when, or how — but it’s going to happen. So when it does, a small part of your brain can wrap your head around THAT idea — the “oh, fuck, here comes the storm. Time to go through some shit.”

This is a lot of rambling — is change good? Is it bad? It life fair? It is all for a reason? Is it random chaos? Are we stumbling around in darkness? Do we have ANY control over anything? I don’t have the answers. I myself have no idea how to handle the ups and downs that come with change. But I hope that every storm passes, leaving you a little bit more weathered, and a little bit wiser.

And if all else fails, if life grips you so tightly that you just can’t figure out how to have peace of mind, there’s always laughter and giggles to be had with Comedy Central. And memories to be forgotten in dimly lit bars serving your favorite drinks and playing your favorite songs. And distractions to be had with your favorite movies playing on TV, while eating your favorite snacks, and laughing at your own weird, creepy, sadistic thoughts.

It will all pass. You will adapt because really, you will have no choice. And the world will go on, and the universe will continue to shock us and inspire us all at the same time.