The following is an excerpt from a letter to my friend Shane I wrote this weekend after the family reunion. Which was fun-ish, thanks for asking. (and the title kinda makes sense -- after a bit of arguing with myself i decided it sounds cool so i'm keeping it.)
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My Dad is the youngest of four siblings, and being his youngest child means that all my cousins are older, and I never see them. I had a nice bantering conversation with my 24-year-old cousin Ryan (he's hilarious, just like his father my Uncle Bob) and I even chatted with Jennifer! Jennifer is Bob's 23-year-old daughter -- the last time I saw or spoke to her was at my Aunt Laura's old house (where she lived before she divorced). I vividly remember getting upset because the "big girls" (Jennifer and my sister) went off to play basketball and get into other mischief, and wouldn't let me play. I was about 4 at the time. Maybe 5. The pretty, cultured female stranger I met yesterday is much different than the haughty teenager I can't quite picture. How could she have changed so much without my knowing? Have I changed that much? Have my parents, my sister? I still feel like a fifth grader, yet so different than who I was even a few months ago, every moment molding me slightly into a new form. Ginny (my sister) seems different now than I always picture her in my head -- could this be because she goes off to college and i don't see her for months at a time, and barely even then? Did it seem like this when she lived at home? Now that I think about it, all my memories show her in different stages of development. Almost like those picture books which you have to flip through really fast; each memory is a slightly different picture, and when you look at them all together they show the current of change -- but if the first and last photo's are juxtaposed, they may look nothing alike. Does the changing ever stop? Which leads me to my parents. I always feel I'm learning new things about them, but they're never changing; I just wasn't aware before of this piece of what makes them them. Do they not feel different to me because I've always been with them through the transitions (as if I've always seen the pictures moving together and have never been able to pick out a distinctly different individual picture), so that the changes are too subtle to identify? Or did they, at some point (going back into the clay analogy) harden into a permanent form? At one point does one decide "this is who i am?" Is there any definite self in life? Are the pictures ever the same, continually? Do people ever really stop changing?
2 comments:
The great philosopher Heroclitus once said "The only thing that is permanent is change" (yay LOTR class!).
I see this in myself, and those around me. *shrug* change is normal. Change happens. It's how we adapt(change (in any way)) to the change that shows who we really are.
I love you.
It's definitely harder to see changes in development in adults, because although they have more figured out than kids do, there is always room for change in everyone. But obviously, physical changes are going to continue occurring despite age (and conversely, with age comes physical change). People don't just stop learning new things as they age, and this is one of the keys of change. Although some change isn't as obvious (and may cause one to suggest that change has ceased), it still occurs. A lot can evoke change, whether one is aware of it at the time or if one looks back upon it years later as something that one views as a life-changing event.
Heroclitus also said (this is the sentence after Nathan's quote, actually), "The only constant [in life] is change," which is the part of that quote I usually think about because it's so paradoxical. If the sole constant is preservation, or the state of there being no change, then there would be no life as we know it. One often views the word "constant" as a sense of security, something that does not change. However, it is the idea that one always has something to fall back upon when one's change fails, that truly defines "constant." It is a sense of security that provides one with the courage to continue to change. We thrive upon the various effects of change in order to subsist, and it is for this reason that we can rest assured that it will forever exist.
Barack Obama said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Only a small fraction of the change that comes from outside influences translates itself to change one; the change that has the most effect on one is the kind that one undergoes on one's own as one ages. Additionally, others may view one's change and see this as their outside influence to evoke their personal change. If we as individuals continue to change on our own, then others will find in themselves the power to change. This chain reaction is ever-present and never-ending, it is the constant sense of change that we rely upon to maintain the safety of our psyches and the safety of the world.
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