“Life is a journey, not a destination.” “Life is beautiful.”

I stare at both mantras daily as I eat dinner with my kids. They stare out at me from placemats my parents gave me for Christmas ten years ago.

I wholeheartedly agree with my placemats, but I haven’t lived my life like a journey, despite that agreement. Instead, I’m always packing my bags to get somewhere, still figuring out what to take with me. Every day I sort through my “stuff” and fret that I’ve forgotten something or packed incorrectly.

But something has shifted this past year.

Defining what has shifted is hard. It’s more of a feeling. What has changed? I can only identify it by noticing what is missing, and what is missing is anxiety, and anxiety’s friend, depression. It is ironic, but I had anxiety that my anxiety was missing for about six months. I felt oddly “flat,” and I wondered if I was depressed for a few more months. I’ve still had many moments of anger, grief, happiness, and boredom over the past few months, but they’ve felt different. The emotions lasted as long as they needed to, then they were gone. The anxiety, depression, and drive that pushed me onward, which usually took over from the first emotional trigger, had disappeared.

What happened?

For a while I kept trying to find an answer to why I felt different. There must be something clear and concrete that suddenly caused me to change. The headaches I started to develop, explained by menopause, were maybe instead signs of brain cancer, and brain cancer was impacting my emotions, one thought I had. Or menopause itself had caused a sudden shift.

I looked for one thing to explain the shift and minimized all the subtle changes I’d made over the past ten years. I did not acknowledge that the shift could relate to my work to live in alignment with my values, to slow down, to live in the present. I didn’t recognize the ten years of life experience and daily challenges I’d given myself through day-to-day living as a full-time single parent on a part-time basis, navigating new relationships, and building my own business. I forgot about the ten years of coaching and training, the mistakes I had to address and hold myself accountable for, and the successes that taught me what works and what doesn’t.

Instead, I assumed I had magically changed, or imagined something was wrong.

Our world celebrates social media-worthy, groundbreaking change with fireworks and celebration. Our world treats change like a destination we suddenly arrive at, not an evolution that took years.

Then, when we don’t change, and our world doesn’t change, we give up. We throw up our hands, say it’s impossible, and succumb to anxiety or depression. We carry on as we always have, feeling heavy, assuming nothing will ever change, living to survive and hoping that one day we’ll find that elusive life destination where we’re happy, where everything works as it should, where we’ll finally be done. Where we’ll have accomplished “life.”

Change takes time.

In life, we search for that defining moment, a single catalyst that transforms us into a new version of ourselves. But change isn’t a destination. It’s an evolution, and most of it happens while you’re too busy packing your bags to notice.