One of syndicated columnist Abigail Van Buren's most poignant questions - to which she gave one of her best answers - came from a man who had always wanted to do something else in his life, but was afraid to go back to school to get his training. "If I go back now, I'll be 44 years old before I graduate," he wrote in his despair. To which Dear Abby responded: "And how old will you be if you don't go back to school?"

What a great commentary on life. The essence of our experience here is to change and grow, to seize the chance to improve ourselves and the lives of those around us. That assignment does not grow weaker as we grow older. If anything, as we add to our experiences we learn more about our potential and we see more opportunities.Unfortunately, at the same time we also accumulate useless habits and traits. Change may be the law of life, but it isn't always comfortable. So we often seek the comfortable way. The more frequently we travel a route, the deeper grow the grooves, the harder to pull out of the ruts.

So there we are, caught between our aspirations and our inhibitions. We want to change, but how do we do it? We want to exchange our old reality and ignorance for new skills and knowledge, but the task seems overwhelming. We want to be more active and less passive, more spiritual and less worldly, more in charge of ourselves and less reliant on others' whims.

We could make great lists of things we want to be different in our life, but our inertia keeps us in place, locked into a situation that remains the same with each sunset.

Meanwhile, the excuses and the evasions mount, and in the end we find ourselves in the embrace of what one writer called the "Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda" syndrome.

In short, we come to believe that past choices will forever govern our future, when what the Lord wanted was just the opposite. The Apostle Paul told us to put off the old man,"which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" and put on the new man. (Eph. 4: 22, 23.) Nephi said it another way: "Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself" (2 Ne. 2:16), and the emphasis here is on "act."

"Some people intend to make a decision and then never get around to it," wrote President Ezra Taft Benson. "They intend to paint the barn, to fix the fence, to haul away that old machinery or remove that old shed, but the time of decision just never arrives.

"Some of us face a similar situation in our personal lives," he continued. "We intend to pay a full tithing, to begin keeping the Word of Wisdom, to make our initial home teaching visits early in the month. However, without actual decision followed by implementation, the weeks and months go by and nothing is accomplished. We could drift into eternity on these kinds of good intentions. The Lord apparently sensed this weakness in His children, for He said: `Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today.' " (D&C 64:25) (God, Family, Country, p. 389.)

In other words, do it. Make the decision, then make the start. How? We should first recognize what the problem is and what assumptions hold it together. Then we should count the costs of change and plan our action. Experience tells us to take each step one at a time, solving one situation to clear the way for another. And we should ask for help from the Creator whose plan makes change possible, making ourselves receptive to the promptings of the Spirit. Great support is freely available to those who ask it of the Lord.

It may not always be comfortable to make important changes, nor was it ever intended to be. But the alternative is to live forever in a twilight zone of regret, dreaming of possibilities that might have been. Such regret is an acid, corroding our happiness and peace of mind and eating away at our relationship with ourselves and with those we love.

It's important to remember that every member of the Restored Church - every single member - is in the kingdom because someone else, at some time or some place, made a decision to change. We owe an enormous debt to those thousands of brave people, who in the quiet recesses of their hearts resolved that life had more to offer them - and changed.

In the end we'll find that our struggle was worth it, regardless of when we joined the battle. It really isn't too late to change, and the rewards we so carefully anticipated will be there as promised.

Finally, we also will have learned another of life's great lessons. Proverbs 25:26 puts it this way: "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls."