We often try to build our lives around things that feel permanent.
A career. A relationship. An identity. A purpose. A particular version of ourselves.
But perhaps the first thing we need to accept is much simpler:
The only constant is change.
Once you truly understand this, you can begin to adjust to almost anything.
Even our lives are temporary
We are born, grow, build relationships, create things, lose things, and eventually die.
When someone close to us dies, it can feel as though life has stopped. But after months and years, somehow, we learn to live with the absence.
The same will happen when we are gone.
People will grieve. Life will continue. New people will be born. Humanity will continue.
This isn't meant to make life meaningless.
Perhaps it makes life more meaningful.
Because our time is temporary, what we do with it matters.
We are not necessarily born for one profession
We often say:
"He was born to be a doctor." "She was born to be an artist."
But is that really true?
A thousand years ago, many of today's professions didn't exist. Even a hundred years ago, the nature of many careers was completely different.
So perhaps a person isn't born for a particular profession.
Perhaps they are born with certain curiosities, abilities, sensitivities and interests.
Those interests find different forms depending on the world they are born into.
Someone fascinated by understanding nature might become a scientist.
Someone fascinated by building things might become an engineer.
Someone fascinated by people might become a psychologist.
Someone fascinated by expression might become a writer or musician.
And the same person can have several of these interests.
The profession is only one expression of something deeper.
The world changes with us
Look at AI today.
For many of us, AI feels almost magical.
We are fascinated by it because we are witnessing something new. We want to understand what is happening underneath—the mathematics, models, algorithms and systems that make it work.
But imagine the next generation.
AI may simply be infrastructure to them.
Just as we don't find electricity magical every time we turn on a light.
And perhaps AI combined with robotics will become the next ordinary thing.
People will simply tell machines what they want done, just as humans once learned to domesticate animals and use them for work.
What seems extraordinary today eventually becomes ordinary.
Then something else will emerge.
And the cycle will continue.
So what should we do?
Adapt.
Not because we should blindly chase every new trend.
But because reality itself keeps moving.
The skills we need change.
The technologies change.
The jobs change.
Our relationships change.
Our bodies change.
Our interests change.
Even our understanding of ourselves changes.
Trying to preserve everything exactly as it is may therefore be a losing battle.
Instead, we can learn to remain curious.
To keep learning.
To let go when something has served its purpose.
To explore when something new appears.
And to accept that changing direction doesn't necessarily mean we failed.
Sometimes it simply means the world changed—and we changed with it.
Perhaps there is no final version of us
Maybe the goal isn't to discover the one thing we were born to do.
Maybe the goal is to discover the patterns in what repeatedly interests us, develop them deeply, and allow them to evolve.
Change doesn't have to be something we fight.
It can be something we learn to move with.
Because everything changes.
And perhaps the ability to change with it is one of the few things worth cultivating for a lifetime.