Why do people resist change?

Isn’t monotony annoying? How can one be wearing the same kind of clothes everyday, eating similar food on a daily basis, doing the same thing from morning to night every day, talking about limited set of things all the time, meeting a handful of known people and going out to the same set of known places all through life?

Apparently for some people it’s the way of living their life. It’s how they have known life to be and they have no understanding or willingness to understand that it does not need to be this way. This confined limited world gives them the happiness they need and there is no need to explore beyond.

The above puzzles me. I wonder then why there is a different set of people who love to explore, who love to find out what’s more there life has to offer, who love trying out new clothes, new cuisines, meeting new people, learning about new languages and cultures, expanding their knowledge everyday maximising the usage of the wonderful thing called human brain.

Can we say that one set is better than the other? I definitely know that both the sets are required to create a balance on this resource limited planet that we live in, but at the same time I wonder why be born as a human being if there is no inquisitiveness to find out about new things, if there is no willingness to accept that treading on a journey may require you to change a few aspects of your life and may require you to be more open minded about new people, their food, their language and their culture.

The fundamental question I struggle to understand is resistance people normally have with the idea of any change. And sometimes the resistance is so strong that they don’t mind spending their entire lives in closed circuits of their comfort zone. Mind you here I am not talking about people who can’t afford to embark on journeys which can lead them to new experiences of life, my challenge is with those who don’t have the willingness to do so. Do they feel they have a purpose of living a human life? If yes, what is it?

Is human life really supposed to be linear with only a limited set of experiences as variables or is it a quadratic equation with ambitions and inquisitiveness to solve for?

What is the right way of living? According to Hindu holy text Bhagwat Geeta, Lord Krishna says that one’s way of living should be focused on their karma. He broadly defines the right karma based on the stage of life one is in – student, householder, retired and renunciation. The question is whether as a student I should only read my course books or be open to explore books which expand my knowledge further? As a householder should I limit my family outings only to the local area or if I can afford then should I put in efforts to show them around the world? As a retired person should I focus on giving up household responsibilities to sit at one place and meditate on God, or should I start taking up social work more seriously and work towards making the world a better place for my next generation? And finally during renunciation does the supreme lord want somebody who only did the same thing everyday and focused on attaining Him or somebody who lived a wealth of experience and left a legacy behind?

As I have been writing this, it has become clearer to me as to what is my way of living, hopefully it helps you decide yours too!