Time & Change: Their Affair with Humanity

"Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don't go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day or an hour, or half a second, when so much happens, it's almost like you are born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet." -E.R. Frank

I am constantly fascinated with the relationship between time and change. Split-second decisions can change a life in a heartbeat. Carefully-planned changes may backfire and have absolutely no bearing on the future. An honest look into someone's eyes has the power to change you forever. A seemingly promising five-page letter sleeps beneath a pile of other letters from the past, changing nothing but its color as it ages. My friends and I have this theory that whenever the weather changes dramatically , or whenever we drink Thai tea-which isn't as often as we sometimes would like- a large shift in dynamics happens between people we know. Every time the weather gets colder, or warmer, something substantial happens. And I wonder if these shifts in dynamics are actually happening all the time- we just don't notice them. I think that maybe the visual and sensory cues of the weather make our observations more keen. And perhaps we notice these shifts more when we drink Thai tea because we usually drink it at obscenely early hours of the morning when our subconscious is piloting us more than our own consciousness. When we give in to soft feelings rather than sharp logic.

Change is in the very nature of being; maybe that's why we don't notice it right away. Every new day is different from the previous day, though barely perceptible. Body metabolism is one such process as also growth of trees and revolving of planets; though these too aren't easily perceptible day by day. Tides come and go. Sometimes a whole river changes its course as was the case with the Saraswati, a river that once ran through India, vanishing 4,000 years ago. The great insight of the enlightened, Gautam the Buddha, was the everything that is, will change and the changed will change further. Time and change have such a unique relationship. There can't really be one without the other. And it is strange to me because I can't quite pin either down. They just happen and we have to deal with the consequence of their interaction.

[Also, now that I'm thinking on it, my friends and I should really stop drinking tea in the middle of the night and sleep like normal people instead. I'm sure our perception and judgement of things would improve greatly...]