Change Is a Double-Edged Sword

Yesterday, as I was listening to Landslide (one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs) I came across a line that really got me thinking. The line goes “Well I’ve been afraid of changing because I’ve built my life around you.” To paint a better picture, it may help to add that Stevie Nicks, the writer of this beautiful 70s song, is talking about having built her life around Lindsey Buckingham (her then-boyfriend and Guitarist of Fleetwood Mac). The emotions she expresses in this song derive directly from her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham.  

However, I felt that what she was expressing is something deeper than just her feelings from and towards a seemingly difficult relationship. I’ve come to think that the feelings, or rather inclination, that Stevie Nicks found herself having when she wrote Landslide, can be found all over our lives. Whether we find ourselves as singles or in a relationship, we all seem to be afraid of change. Yet, at the same time, we seem to spend much of our lives longing for change. How may we make sense of this?

We may feel a certain unease about moving to a different city, starting a new job, or falling in love with a new person, yet at the same time, we often find ourselves hoping our life-situation would just change. Though we may not know exactly what we want, we know "this" just ain’t it! 

Quite a paradox we found here, huh? So again, how can we make sense of this? Why is it that we are afraid of change, yet, at the same time, have a burning desire for it? Moreover, how can it be that we experience these two seemingly paradoxical inclinations at the same time and often in the same state of mind? 

Let me offer a very rough thought, as I don’t want to ruin your own contemplation. On the one hand, we have our current life-situation, filled with all the things that we know, and on the other hand we have the, at least to some extent, unknown future full of possibilities and potential. 

Now, consider any kind of change. It seems as if we naturally visualize the things that we desire as coming about through that change (given we have set ends and are procedually rational) and thus, by extension, experience a desire for the change itself. On the other hand, we also realize, perhaps only subconsciously, that changing would disrupt a certain aspect of our current life—we fear we may “lose” part of our current life-situation. Now, contemporary economic theory suggests that losing something that we possess (here in a looser sense) will have a far greater negative psychological impact than the positive psychological impact gaining something of the same magnitude would have. Simply put, we would prefer to not lose one of our dollars than get an additional dollar when faced with both possibilities (assuming a reference point >$1). This simple yet powerful idea goes by the name of “loss aversion”. 

Fine, you may think, but how can this help us live a better life? Well, I am not so sure it directly can, but it can certainly help us understand ourselves a little better, which in return may help us live a better life. Perhaps loss aversion (with respect to intangible things such as feelings of comfort and our current life-situation) can do a pretty good job of explaining why we often seem afraid of the same change that we so desperately desire. 

What do you think?
I would love to hear some of your thoughts! Feel free to contact me in whichever way you like.