Change

Life

is very much about change, about letting go, about discarding the illusion of permanence.

It is perhaps the hard-worn fact that is most difficult to comprehend, and much less to accept without regret.

But all thing pass: the good, the bad, and everything in between. Seasons, time, memories ... they dissipate into the stream of remembrance and fade from the here and now.

I've lived a life long enough to know what change is and the pain it brings. I've lost, I've wept, I've looked back with regret, anger and resentment, I've reminisced, I've dreamnt. I know that change is the hardest thing - sometimes it is voluntary, at others it is involuntary. Whatever the nature of change is, it brings a certainty: pain and loss.

Change will happen soon. I look at it perplexed, with a surfeit of joy yet abounding sorrow. Change will bring with her the waters that will cleanse a present and draw in its backwash waves of fond memories - however few - of the people and the moments which have become so much a part of my life. Change will wash away an identity I have come to built.

But like Janus, change brings with it hope and the promise of growth. For hope to survive, change needs to happen. Change stirs the soul of hope. Change renews the vows of growth, it keeps the spirit nimble and alive.

Change will open the doors to new opportunities, to new lands, to new experiences. Change will welcome the possibility for happiness. And freedom will ride on the winds of Change.

We must then learn to embrace that change as much as we fear or resent it. Life is to be lived in phases with each passing of a phase marking an aspect of growth. Perhaps it is when we welcome change that we truly live for when we resist change, we have already died.