Change

What better time than now to change? Life around us is changing, preparing for a new year, a new set of troubles and challenges. A new set of happiness and ecstasy. A new month begins, the start of a brand new year.


Change is always inevitable. It can be for the better, or for the worse of a person, a family, a society. Let's face it, another year, another year older and another year closer to the end. What can we do about it?

Perhaps there is nothing we can do, maybe we can only sit back and watch as change envelopes us. We'll always grow older, weaker. Eventually the cashier will stop asking us for our license when we buy alcohol (happened to me earlier), eventually we may lose our ability to comprehend the basics around us, forget our own children and grandchildren, or mistake them for someone else. Eventually, we'll die.

We can choose to accept that, to sit back and watch as Fate, God, the Giant Spaghetti Monster or whatever deity you may or may not believe in directs us to our final end. "To face the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune" as Hamlet put it.

Maybe that's not the only option. Perhaps we can fight against change, and bend it to our will. "To take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them" as Hamlet said.

How great would that be? To be masters of our own Fate, to challenge that very thing which appears immortal, unbeatable.

I've never really been in that latter category. Though I don't consider myself a religious person, I do believe in some deity who is omniscient. Since he is omniscient, God (for lack of a better term), would be in control of our Fate, our destiny. So, what power do we have to overcome our preordained lives? None, of course.

While I seemed mostly content to live with this helplessness, hoping that Fate will see it necessary to change my life for the better, things are no longer the same. I won't sit back and hope for things to get better. I won't. What was it that Misato Katsuragi said in an episode of Evangelion? "Acts of man are more reliable than acts of God."

I've been living in the past for far too long. I've lived with an undesired and undeserved sense of helplessness and personal hatred for far too long. And only I, it would seem, can change it.

That is what is necessary and my goal for the changing times.

Raise your glasses with me, my friends, and let us drink to change, the most worthy cause of all! Happy New Year.