Downpour

It's the last day of summer, and I leave for the University tomorrow. Will it rain today?

I came home with two carloads of stuff and will soon repack it all to head back to my friends and future degree. But I wonder what else I'm carrying around. I brought more in my coupe than anyone realized. Even myself. Yet here I am, taking inventory again. Can I please leave it all somewhere and stop toting it around? My gas mileage is suffering...

I'm in the mood to be ambiguous. Forgive me.

You can change yourself, but you can't. You can change your clothes, your hair, your relationship status, your major, your usual drink order at a coffee shop. It doesn't really change much, though, does it? Change is constant and perpetual, like time. Not a one time occasion or a future eventuality. It is past, present, future. You can't escape it. You can't be lost by it. But that doesn't make it bad.

Just scary.

Change carries with it mystery, an element of the unknown. What will happen? What will I be when it's over? Will I make it out of this next bout of violent convulsions unrecognizable?

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Painting poor change in ugly colors, making it the monster of life. It can't help being itself. God put limitations on mankind. Gravity. Three dimensions. Time. Mortality. Change is just one more part of humanity.

So you leave parts of yourself everywhere. Little pieces of you are in people that come and go. Old relationships, friendships, jobs. The people you meet are chipped off in you forever just as you are in them. And maybe they forget that, and so do you, and things get awkward and tense and no one really knows why. It's just a side effect of change. The people you were bonded in the past, but the new people you are don't know what to do with each other.

Change is untamable, uncontrollable, irresponsible to any human being. But it is good.

I found some old poems the other day. Who was I back then?

Change lifts us out of who we were. Time, change's closest companion, heals us, gives change a constant axis on which to move. Both give relief. They bring new people, new friends, new mentors, new lovers. And they make a new you, one who fits absurdly well with the new set of everything.

It won't modify the past. The past is gone. It is cemented in itself and untouchable but by your memory. The future is ready for your pressing hand against the cool mix. The present begs your attention, though. In this single breath you can rest and live and exist.

So breathe already. Accept the air and exhale. Maybe it's your last, but there's a good chance it's not. More change ahead, but you'll find those who change with you, and they'll end up composing most of yourself, and you them.

And God? Well, he's there. He just isn't going to let you stagnate. Your life with him will change more than all of the above. Sometimes you're the teacher; sometimes you're the student. But you always learn either way. His change is constant, at times seems reckless, but is always purposeful. While you may change in every possible way, He remains immutable. Funny how He always turns out to be the things humans wish they were.

Lots of clouds, but still no drops.