Between Places

"When trapped in a cage for very long time, the world can seem like a really big place" - Mr. Miyagi, The Next Karate Kid

Things change. Change has always been one of the defining traits of nature. It is inevitable; it cannot be stopped. Nothing is permanent. To seek preservation that defies this is to live in a non-existant reality. To stagnate is to to give a path of attack for decay. Change, for better or worse, can be both an ally and a fearsome foe. We may only do what we can with the time that is given to us, with the knowledge and experience and wisdom that we may ave acquired to face change, and the outcome... well, that is something nobody may be able to discern.

I have come to a point in my life where great changes are occuring. To me, and to those around me, as well as the world that I reside within. Then again, it would be wrong of me to think that great changes have not been constantly taking place; quite the contrary, the process never stops. No one, no single living being, may bethe judge of what is truly and ultimately right and wrong in the world, because no one truly has the ability to see the great picture; the great reality, if there is even such a thing. Ultimately, we may all only accomplish what seems right to us at the time. Yet, this is no reason to think that a person who commits a seemingly evil act may find justification by claiming no one really understands wht is right and wrong; it is our basic nature to want to survive, and to seek the best manner to survive. The best method of survival is not to eradicate our enemies and getting to the top. It is collectivity and cultivation. Both these methods advocate the process of change, yet unfortunately, due to our humanistic short-sightedness, we constantly seek the short term alternative of competition and survival of the fittest.

What happens when different, warring, entities collide in the field of battle, fighting over a limited resource? Someone wins and someone loses, and the winner gains control of the resource. However, the loser, the one who is pushed down, begins to adapt and rise back up to fight back and regain control, and the cycle goes on and on; the only definite is that the resource is being used up, uncultivated and dried up. Metaphoric and ambiguous though my description might be, but the real-world examples are aplenty that I will not bother to mention any at the moment. No, despite what some of us may think, competition is not the means to ultimate survival. It is a negative, destructive process of change that advocates one thing; loneliness and emptiness. At the end, there can only be one winner, and the world will become empty, void, corrupt, and the one who is at the winning end will feel only one thing for all their efforts; loneliness.

True survival, true adaptation to change requires a far more subtle method. It requires collectivity and cultivation. Everything that drives nature revolves around the cultivation of life. Nature changes constantly, yet the balance is so dynamic that eventually it creates this amazing element we call life. Life and death has always been a process of change that is neither positive nor negative; it is not about creation and destruction, but merely the way the balance of give-and-take works. Give-and-take is what keeps nature working the way it does, and we are constantly eroding it. Eroding it with our industry and capitalistic tendencies, our insatiable thirst for mass consumption and our careless use of nature's resources.

If we do not seek to change, if we do not learn that it is only through collectivity that we may survive in the long run, then there really is no hope for us.

But that is not what I came here to talk about.

It is change that I am seeking in my life right now. There are things that are running in my head, things that I think I should be doing, together with other things that I do not fully understand yet; this much I am sure, I am dissillusioned with the type of life I am living right now. I have had enough of living the way that the society around me wants me to; I am tired of searching for ambition, of competing, of meeting other's expectations. I am bored of the lifestyles that the people I know live. Bored of the life I am leading. I need a change.

It is not suicide I seek; I value the gift of life far too much for that. Recently, something truly wonderful and beautiful happened to me. Something that opened my eyes, something that opened the door of the cage that I have been trapped in for a long time, something that peeled off another layer of the rose-tinted glasses that I wear. It is true what some people say, that knowledge is more about discovering yourself rather than what is outside. I seek change; I have been inspired to seek it out by that miracle.

What that change is, I am not entirely sure; but I know that it is imminent.