My new mantra.

You can't stop change.

You can stop progress.  You can stop growth.  You can direct and redirect the course of your life.  But the course will always continue.  You cannot stop change.

I believe that we never wake up the same person we were yesterday.  Something was learned the day before that has since been processed in our sleep.  Some food was consumed that added nutrients or protein that hadn't been there, and it has since been metabolized.  Anyone who has lived past the age of five has got to have figured out that things can be completely different in an instant.  One day you will come home from school and find out that you're moving, or your mother's expecting, or someone is sick, or someone got a job, or someone lost a job.

I see change as I do many things, as being ultimately neutral.  Obviously there are good and bad changes.  It would be oblivious of me to believe that some changes were not positive or negative.  But what I mean is that we always have some kind of choice to make when we're approached by change.  It's not just the change that will be positive or negative, but our response to it.  I also see change as being neutral because of this innate sense I have of it all just evening out.  As if just as many bad things will happen as good things.  I have no proof of this, nothing scriptural or scientific.  It's just sort of the way I've always seen things.  It's also made me kind of nervous whenever something really good happens to me, as if something bad is waiting around the corner to even the score.  My life has never been like that.  It's never been that something awesome has happend and then almost immediately something terrible.  So I don't know why I even have this idea in my head.  But I think it is all just the basic knowledge that good and bad things will happen to everybody.  And because change is inevitable, both good and bad, I see it as neutral.  Time is neutral, and change is synonymous with time.

People say they don't like change.  At least I've never heard a person say "I love change."  I don't think that people actually don't like change, I just think that they don't like knowing change is happening.  When change happens slowly and gradually people accept it and even enjoy it.  Change such as the sun setting, or flowers blooming, or something like that.  When a big change happens in their life, so long as they don't think about it in terms of how their life will never again be "the same" they are more often than not excited, maybe nervous, but not upset.

So long as people don't realize change is happening they're excited.  People are perfectly content letting the world rise and fall, deteriorate and rebuild around them.  We are completely self-centered (and I can't imagine how we could be otherwise) and so long as we don't have to lift a finger and it doesn't really change our routine we're fine with change.

I guess I'm musing over time and change in this existentialistic manner because there are a lot of changes happening with me right now.  Graduation obviously, but other things as well.  And I am having this inner war with myself constantly anymore.  I'm being tossed around inside my own head between opinions and feelings about the whole thing.  I just don't know what to do.  I don't know if this is anxiety, or I'm just tired, or what.  It annoys me that the only possible causes I can think of are chemical.  But I can't think of why I would actually be feeling this way. 

It's just a lot at once.  I'm ascribing meaning to everything.  There is suddenly symbolism in the skies and I've never thought that way before, or if I have it was never so relevant.  (BTW, symbolism in the skies is the name of my next skoth band.) 

If there is any kind of conclusion I am attempting to lean to it is that there are a lot of changes happening in my life right now and I'm freaking out a little.  In the morning I face it wearily, in the afternoons I force optimism upon myself, in the evenings I go home somewhat satisfied, and then at night I start to freak out.  Maybe I should just go to bed earlier.

I said last night in a phone conversation with a friend that the knowledge that we would smile again someday was enough reason to smile now.  I believe that in my mind but still can' t muster the feeling in my heart.  Still I remember getting this weird depression when I was graduating high school too, as if there was no more point to life anymore.  But doesn't that make sense, from a mental perspective I mean?  New beginnings are a choice.  Ending's not so much.  Things will always end at some point, but for things to begin there has to be a choice, a spark, or something.  Someone has to make the decision to move forward, otherwise whatever change occurs (because change will occur)  will be less like the budding of a plant and more like the molding of a fungus.  But doesn't it make sense like to feel it's all over once everything you've been working for for years is finished?

I am finished.  And now I have to make the choice to get started.  Because otherwise I'll just sit here and mold.

I have to believe that once I get going I'll gain momentum.  I have to believe that I'll smile again even though all the things that have made me smile have the potential to fade away from my life.  The potential to smile in the future is enough of a reason to smile now.  The potential for a cultivated life in the future is reason enough to start one.

And suddenly like a caress to the mind I remember a piece of scripture that has become quite important to me this past year. 

Philippians 1:6

"...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

God isn't finished with me yet.  He's still working in me and cultivating me no matter what.  Change is inevitable because it is His hand that propels the stars. And what new beginnings I have to offer no matter how nerve racking they may be will usher in new joys, and the potential to smile tomorrow is reason enough to smile today.