Once, my best friend told me she loathes change because she is often unable to exercise control over it. We moved on to a different, more comfortable topic of discussion soon.
A few months after, she ranted about how her life has grown too monotonous and how much she wishes things would change. Somehow, she did not even realize how she had proved herself wrong unknowingly. I realized she was stuck between her perceived self and her true self which is an issue all of us face to some extent, noticeably or not. Undeniably, change is what our heart desires and our mind feeds off.
Perhaps life, in itself, is a series of cosmically mundane but individually profound changes. We are only able to recognize the most prominent ones though, sadly. Like for instance, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the unfortunate end of lovely Pompeii. A change we mourn even today. Graffitis which embellished the glorious walls of the prosperous Roman city once have become mere lyrics now because art never forgets. Earthquakes, death, sorrow, darkness, the former occupants of Pandora’s Box, that’s all change has been limited down to in our eyes. This is why, like my friend, most of us, if not despise, heavily disregard it.
I notice how my mom often lights up when dad texts or calls her out of nowhere for absolutely no reason at all. Is that not a change?
Love, happiness, hope, I think moments full of them often go unnoticed until nostalgia unveils their existence. Perhaps these let us live in the present instead of imagining the future.
On multiple occasions, I feel grateful because I am able to notice even the tiniest of shifts as soon as they happen and it is gorgeous. To know I have recognized a moment I will heavily miss, or find myself thinking about, in the future is a wonderful secret in itself.
I think, somewhere deep inside, all of us crave change. We cannot live without it. What good is constancy, at all? It doesn’t challenge us and we need challenges to move ahead. Will a naive deer ever learn to run if it is not hunted by a hungry tiger at least once? I consider that moment a change also because it is a defining moment for both, the deer and the tiger. Will the deer run away, and continue to do so for the rest of its life or will it learn methods of survival, of war, self-defence to roar back one day?
It matters. Fear matters, sorrow matters but also, hope matters, love matters, hence change matters.
For people who cherish constancy and commitment, we sure dread the monochromic lens. It is fascinating to me, if I am to be honest.
How easily we think we know ourselves when in reality, we are nowhere near it.
It makes me wonder how wrong I must be about my own self.
