A Brand New Day
Even though it is often hard to accept, sometimes embracing the idea of change is the best thing that can happen to you
No notice gave she, but a change, no message, but a sigh” wrote Emily Dickinson. For me these lines epitomise the silent grace with which change sweeps into our lives. Slowly cracking open doors into your existence, blurring your convictions, taking you out to newer courses— all without you realising that you are metamorphosising and that too quickly. Then one day when you least expect it, you wake up in the morning and realise that you are someone brand new. What you choose to do after that totally depends on your perspective on life. If you are like Heraclitus, you will embrace the philosophy that change is the only constant in life, else you will just sit and mope about how far life got you.
Unfortunately for most of us Heraclitus’ wisdom is a far fetched thought and we sit and complain constantly about the transient nature of life. You know that you shouldn’t be complaining, but there you are with your morning cup of coffee, chit chatting with your colleagues about how mean life can be and how change makes you lose the most precious people and things in your life.
On one such day as I sat whining about everything a very wise person said the simplest thing to me. “Everything is a phase in your life. It’ll come and go, you just have to deal with it,” she said. It wasn’t like I had never heard those lines before but that day they resonated with my soul. It struck a chord because that was the day I woke up in the morning feeling it in my gut that I was on the brink of a transition, ready to tip over to the other side which was the unknown. I no longer fit and I knew I needed to move on, but to what and how, I had no idea. So I just sat there waiting and waiting, for that one moment of clarity, that would lead the way. That never happened, but it did give me insight enough to accept whatever this was and move on. My own restlessness and need to stay
“Change sweeps into our lives, slowly cracking open doors into our existence, blurring our convictions, taking us out to newer courses— all without us realising that we are metamorphosising too quickly.”
aloof from my usual group of friends made me think about the time my best friend went missing. I had known her for 18 years out of my 25- year- old existence and we had become friends over the course of the shared misery of our boarding school lives. We shared everything, the same personality, clothes and taste in music. If I was Tweedledum, she was Tweedledee, my enantiomer who was