We often say we want our lives to change.
A different job.
A different city.
A calmer relationship.
A healthier body.
More time of our own.
Enough money to have more choices.
And we tell ourselves the problem is that we do not know where to begin.
Quite often, though, we do.
We know which conversation needs to happen.
Which request needs a no.
Which application needs sending.
Which door we have remained behind for too long.
Which habit has been taking more from us than it gives.
What we do not always know is whether we are prepared to pay the price.
Because meaningful change rarely arrives empty-handed.
A new job may give you freedom, but take away the security of somewhere familiar.
Leaving a relationship that exhausted you may save you, but it can also mean losing the person you were used to telling about your day.
Moving to another country may open your life in ways you once imagined, whilst turning something as ordinary as having coffee with your mother into something that requires a plane ticket.
Even success has a price.
Sometimes it costs time.
Sometimes comfort.
Sometimes friendships that no longer quite understand the life you are building.
And sometimes it costs an older version of you — the person you spent years learning how to be.
Perhaps that is why we stay.
Not because we are cowards.
Not because we do not want something better.
But because the old life, however uncomfortable, is known.
Human beings can tolerate an extraordinary amount of pain when it is familiar.
The unknown offers no such reassurance.
So perhaps "Do I want to change?" is the wrong question.
Most of us do.
The harder question is:
"What will I lose if I do?"
And then there is an even harder one:
"What will I lose if I don't?"
Because staying has a price too.
It is simply harder to notice because the bill does not arrive all at once.
We pay it quietly.
Another year in work we hate.
Another conversation in which we swallow what we wanted to say.
Another morning waking to the same life we keep promising ourselves we will change soon.
Years can pass like this.
Until one day we realise that the decision we postponed because changing seemed too expensive
had a price for not making it too.
Perhaps a greater one.
So when you find yourself frightened by the cost of leaving, do not ask only:
"What will it cost me to go?"
Look once more at where you are standing and ask:
"And what is it costing me to stay?"
— Malek Ayoub