Stability does two things to you. On the plus side, it tends to make you feel safe. When things aren't likely to change, you can relax and take comfort in that. Comfort is a good feeling. We can all use a lot of good feelings, because the alternative is generally bad feelings. I like feeling good.
On the flip side though, stability can totally hold you back. If you are able to rest in a certain amount of comfort and safety, you are less inclined to break out of it. Often you can't achieve an even better kind of stability without breaking out of the current one.
The world is a very uncertain place right now, and not particularly stable. I'm trying to view that as an opportunity. It doesn't seem like there's ever a good time for instability and the risk associated with breaking out of it, but I think that's just a frame of mind.
For example, this is a big year for me, for me and Diana, and an opportunity to begin a new life. That's a little scary, but in the bigger picture I'm just trying to get my head around whether or not the perceived constraints I have to fully achieving the new life vision are real or not. The reconciliation starts to come from the realization that the level of stability we have isn't nearly as high as I think.
I guess I feel like I spend way too much time living in fear. Fear of failure, financial ruin, cancer, war, Republicans, etc. (Just kidding about the last one. Or was I? ;)) I'm not sure how I got that way, beyond the turbulence of my life the last four years. With all the talk recently with college friends showing up on Facebook, I realize how disturbing it is that I've lost a lot of my idealism and hope, and replaced it with fear and doubt. That's shitty.
But as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing it. Perhaps that's where stability counts the most.
"I realize how disturbing it is that I've lost a lot of my idealism and hope, and replaced it with fear and doubt. That's shitty."
That's not shitty, that's going from nothing to lose to having something to lose.
When you start anything and have nothing, all there is is hope. Once you're into it and have something, you have to protect it - fear and doubt is that protection.
You're at a place in life where you have things to lose. It'd be shittier if you were a guy in his mid-to-late 30's with nothing to lose and the same approach to life as a kid in their early 20's.