hey buddy, spare some change?

I know, I know, another “change” post. What can I say, it's a reoccurring theme for me. Well, reoccurring is the wrong word, it's is THE theme.

When I first started down this road, I hated change. Even feared it. My life was riddled with compromises I had made simply to maintain the status quo. It is as if I thought that I could prevent the tides by simply ignoring them. That approach does appear to work for a time. You shift, shimmy and juggle; you sell off small pieces of yourself and fight tooth and nail to maintain things the way they are. However, you eventually recognize that there really isn't much left to sell. With that comes the knowledge that although you have kept those things around you, you yourself have changed. Your “death by a thousand little cuts” is complete and the rotting husk of who you were is left to wilt in the sun.

That pretty much sums up the position I found myself in (that I had put myself in) when I first sat down and started this blog. I looked in my face in the mirror that morning and as I had done many times before asked my reflection “who the fuck is THAT?”...

Somewhere inside me a voice actually answered and said “I have no idea, but I don't like him at all”. Mercifully, I actually listened.

In the next two years, my life was turned upside down. I got divorced. I moved. I have changed jobs. I have made new friendships, disposed of some others. I started looking for the bits of me I had sold off and took them back into myself. I questioned everything that I took as fact (alas, this one doesn't stop). I have loved deeper than I thought possible, and learned what it is to let that go. I have fought. In some ways, I have won, and in a lot of ways, lost. I have learned that the only true way to hold anything is with an open hand. I have discovered strength, and I have embraced my weaknesses. I have found comfort in my own skin.

Above all, I have learned that change is not an enemy. It just might be the dearest friend and teacher I have encountered. Yes, it is merciless. It is relentless, committed to accomplish it's task at all costs. Change works tirelessly to show us life's hidden constants. To reveal to us the things at do not change, the foundational truths that hold the essence of who we are together. I wish there was a universal list of these for me to share, but it is something you need to find within yourself.

Alternately, of course, you could just go on doing what I did all those years, and simply choose to believe your own bullshit for a while longer. There is always tomorrow, right?

Well... not always.