What many of us crave is safety.

And we often find that in familiarity.

There's comfort in rituals and traditions the way we've always done things,

the paths we've trodden many times.

And so we often stick to the same routines, places and people we've known forever,

because it makes us feel as if

the unpredictable mad world around us is just that little bit more certain. Many people, understandably,

are unwilling to dismantle all this, fearful of stepping outside the familiar into something new.

But what happens if the safety we've spent our lives painstakingly constructing

piece by piece begins to constrict us,

limits us to new opportunities, or in the worst case,

begins to feel like a kind of prison?

When that happens, being resistant to change doesn't keep us safe.

It confines us. I've spent a lifetime trying to be open to change and it's scary, disorienting.

But I've learned, certainly as I've got older, to listen to the whisper that says,

Time's up on this Portus, move on.

It's key for me to finding new paths and ways of seeing and ways of being, because it's

the shifting sands of change that we find firmer footing for the future, where we discover

these new paths and ways of living. None of us is static. No one is the same person with the same

needs for a whole lifetime. We grow. We change physically and emotionally. And we must allow our

circumstances to grow with us. Test our safety zones. Step outside them carefully, but purposely,

if we are ever to evolve as we should.

...