Dear Change

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You have been much too inconsiderate. Friendships that I thought would last forever, have flipped over and fizzled out in a day. Prejudices that I held for far too long have given way to the sweetest companionships. Love that I had thought I would never find in my lifetime bumped into me out of nowhere. The weather that I thought would suck me dry with heat in daytime gives me shivers and a runny nose by the time it gets dark. Music that I had skipped over on the radio thinking I would never become the kind of person who could appreciate it, has become my place of solace that I have found myself going back to, time and again. And I have had no choice other than acceptance, sometimes wilful and otherwise reluctant.

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Your endearing smile at the mention of your old friend warms my heart. Perhaps, you have one yourself, although you are rather scant in showing it. But I imagine Time knows it inside out, for the two of you are never not hand in hand.  

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I have Time to thank for the fact that I don’t see movies the same way I used to, as I do for the fact that I read my books through completely different lenses now, no more the innocent reader. I do not sleep as uncaringly as I used to and I do not dream the same things I did five years ago. That which masked the façade of sycophants ceases to exist, and that which made me take it up with my mother every day has lost its appeal. My hands aren’t as soft and neither are my cheeks as full. No more does my father’s rejection of chocolate appear impossible to me, and no more am I unintimidated by the art of oeconomy. But the biggest courtesy I have Time to thank for is bringing you to me.

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I have gritted my teeth together bidding your winds to retreat, lied to myself that I would figure out a way around you, and I have refused to process things resolving rather to give in to the numb. But that hasn’t changed what you have already changed so irrevocably. Yet, do not be mistaken. It is less the complaint of your rash conduct that I occupy myself with than the celebration of your influence on, in the words of Wordsworth, my “purer mind”.

In stolen minutes of introspection, I cannot help but contemplate the contrast in my approach to things between then and now. I would not be who I am, someone I am proud of, if not for you, and this makes me believe that your former and impending onslaughts, however dramatic, were and will be worth it.

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They tell me, “Time and tide wait for none”, but that’s not true. Tides wait for the moon to pull them its way, and time, for you. Then it is not wrong that I am not as faithful, for I wait for your arrival during only bad times, hoping you would turn them around. In good times, however, I wish never to see your face if not for you to make them better. Not that your face is unpleasant, or at least not always. In the handful of years I have lived, I can well account for having seen your face at every step of the way, but never once did it bear the same features. You are so just as to subject even your own face to your own ravishes.

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Are you then as deprived of control over yourself as we are of ourselves? Do you conduct yourself on the whims of a higher being as we do on those of yours? Perhaps this higher power is but a painter who strokes to life our lives on your canvas. Perhaps, we are mere elements designed to have the privilege of seeing this art on a black screen morphing into shifting images with every blink of our lids. These renewed pictures give way to a brief darkness as we fall asleep for the painter to be able to have a moment of respite, and when this darkness prevails in the light of death – perhaps, the painting stands completed. 

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Then, is art really infinite? For, what is art if there is but no one to witness it? I do not know. But as I get painted through the art of my life, making my strokes up as I go on or should I say, my maker does, I can only pray that I am reflected back in the highlight of the chiaroscuro, and that I am not lost in the blend of the sfumato. As for you, the constant inconstant and the inconstant constant, I can only pray that you don’t let me down.