Monday, March 28, 2005

changes

it's been more than a week now. i'm feeling a little better, but am still bogged down by superficial thoughts and emotions that are preventing me from doing any worthy work.

when i become at a loss for words, when my well of inspiration dries up, i turn to my old letters and diaries for ideas. so far my practice of counting on my old entries to get the wheels rolling again has never let me down in the past, and this time is no different.

as i thumbed through all my journals, i realised just how much i've changed. i can no longer relate to the 16-year-old who spent most of her life analysing the words of the guy she liked. i could hardly believe i was, only 3 years ago, so obsessed with pleasing people i now know were not worth my efforts. i read entry after entry, not recognising the person i once was.

just recently i wrote to a friend saying that i am glad he hasn't changed a bit. after reading the words i penned into my old journals, i know what a whole load of bull that is. it's impossible for someone to not change at all. i can't even begin to understand the "me" from only a couple of years back anymore. i can't pinpoint the exact moments, but i sure can detect a difference in my tone, in the way i described things then and the way i describe things now. my train of thought has changed. where my mind was once occupied with one thing and one thing alone, it is now filled with various thoughts that i struggle to keep up with.

it is so easy to just say to someone, "you're still you". it simply rolls off the tongue and we say it as if it were a compliment; something along the lines of "i thought you were nice, and i still think you're nice." thinking about how i can't see myself in the old journal entries anymore, i am of the opinion that it is not a compliment when you tell someone that they haven't changed. it suggests that the person is stagnant, stationary, unevolved...as if he is resistant to improvement or adaptation.

it made me wonder what kind of a person i'd be now if i continued to have the mind of my 16-year-old self. horror of all horrors!

yet i do feel as if my closest friends have not changed - not much anyway. it is a feeling that opposes my mind, which usually knows better than my heart. perhaps we all have changed in our own ways, but because we grew up together, these personal changes influenced each other and, as a result, became a part of one another.

maybe this is why, when separated by long periods of absence, we sense more changes in a person's character than if we were in constant contact. there wouldn't have been any "give and take" in the individual changes, hence existing gaps widen and new cracks form. when people change together, differences develop and fade at the same rate.

it's rather like physics: "net change = zero".

i'm not sure if this makes any real sense. all i know is that while i feel sad that i have to let go of the old me(s?) and work on allowing my current self to change and evolve at its own pace, it is liberating to realise that my friends and family are changing just as i am, and that i have a direct role to play in those changes. therefore i should not be afraid of changes, and there are indeed alot of changes going on in my life right now, but instead embrace them and hope that we are being moulded together at the same time.

perhaps we shouldn't say "i'm glad you're still the same" anymore.
perhaps it would be better to say "i'm glad we're growing together".

lishun at 11:15 PM

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