When we start a new phase in our lives "the next grade in school or a new job" we do it with both anticipation and regret. It's exciting to open a door and start to walk through, but it commits us to leaving something behind. You can't be in two rooms at once. Beginnings and endings are adjoining rooms connected by the same door. Like graduations and commencements, they are inseparable. One leads directly to the other.

As school wrapped up last week, my daughter left third grade and the teacher and classmates she's built up a relationship with through the school year. She also left the building she's known for four years and heads now for a bigger, newer one. Meanwhile, I'm leaving a job I've held for four years, tying up loose ends, cleaning out my desk and saying goodbye to coworkers. In September, after a summer of exploring and adventuring, she'll go on to fourth grade and I, well I'm not entirely certain what I'll be doing. The plan is to devote myself to writing full-time.

The weeks leading up to this point have made me think about human nature in relation to change. I've always thought of myself as open to change, ready to embrace it and not look back. I go with the flow, I'm always ready for a new course of action. I realize that change is necessary. Nothing grows without changing. A sunflower seed that stays a seed will never blossom and bloom.

Yet, how easy it is to shy away from change, even on more or less trivial matters as haircuts and clothing. Without the guidance of hairdressers, I'd likely be wearing the same hairstyle as when I graduated high school. Even when rain gushes in the sides of my well-worn sneakers I put off getting new ones because the old ones are "broken in" and comfortable. I'm used to them and reluctant to go through the process of adjustment that I know is coming.

It's hard to remember that something old was once something new, too, and the new will one day become the old.

A former employer asked me, "Have you learned anything from the experience?" The answer is, as always, "Yes." There's no way to separate living from learning. We may apply what we learn at different rates, but even if we learn what we don't like or don't want to do, no experience is ever wasted.

I remind myself that I'm a different person than I was four years ago. What I learned from this job I can now apply to the future. I learned what I like, what I don't like. I discovered what I'm good at and what areas I'm weak in. I now know the talents to bring out as weapons in a crisis and which ones should just stay on the shelf and rust.

Self-discovery means never being able to go back to the way things were. We are changed by our experiences. And not just the hard ones. We can't go back and repeat them because that would mean erasing everything we have become because of them.

Life is like a series of rather random bus rides. When you get on a regular city bus you do so knowing what direction you are heading and where and when you will get off. Each stage in life, though, is a bus ride into the unknown. Sometimes the route is mapped out so we know exactly which stop we plan to get off at and when the connecting bus will arrive. Other times, we find ourselves booted off at the end of the line with no indication of which way to go next.

Either way, the journey is actually the destination. Each decision we make, each bus we take, holds different people to encounter and different challenges to overcome. Each new experience adds a new dimension to our personality. The more things we try, the more facets are exposed and polished, and the more valuable we become.

Sometimes we hang on to situations we've outgrown just because of indecision. We stay too long on one bus for fear of making a wrong transfer. Thankfully, wrong choices and detours are allowed. Just as there are many roads leading into one city, there are usually several bus routes that lead your next connection.