From good to different

When I was very young - and when I say "very young", I mean something like thirteen or fourteen - I liked who I was, and I thought at the time that this meant I should never want to change. Which makes sense, in a way - if you like something, why would you want it to change? You like it just the way it is. But again, I was very young, and nobody really has anything figured out when they're very young, and the things you hold with great conviction may change into different shapes of idea or even be discarded altogether, hopefully for the better.

I grew a little older - and when I say "a little older", I mean something like fifteen or sixteen - I was a bit of a different person than I was when I had the idea that I didn't want to change. The overall shape of my personality and interests and way of going about things wasn't that different from what it was like before, and one could see how it had progressed into its current form compared to what it used to be, but it was different. I didn't entirely like myself, but that's natural for somebody of that age. And in the vast most of cases, it was less that I didn't like the way I was so much as I didn't like the way others treated me because of who and what I was. I didn't think about changing very much during that time. I don't know why. If someone had asked me about whether or not I would have wanted to change myself, I don't think I would have said yes.

And then I grew a little older still - now we're at something like seventeen or eighteen - and I had at this point begun to examine a number of ideas and philosophies that I had been vaguely aware of until then but hadn't really begun to form my own opinions on until that time. I suppose this sort of thing is to be expected, or at the least, it isn't unusual. Some of these were ideas I had to apply to the world around me, and some of these were ideas I had to apply to myself. To tell you what they were and how I went about doing that is a long story and best saved for another time, but one of the conclusions I reached was that:

1. Things change.
2. People change.
3. That's okay.
4. That's actually kind of fantastic, because if you're the one doing the changing, you don't always have to change for the worse.

Isn't it true, though, that some changes are not for the worst or even for the better but just for the different? There are different kinds of good things. Salvador Dali's art is good, and Vincent van Gogh's art is good, and Carson Ellis's art is good - or at least, in my opinion they're all good. But they're all quite different, aren't they? Yes. They are.

And when I made that revelation, the idea of changing as a person became exciting to me. I could be all sorts of people in my lifetime, with different ideas and traits and interests and ways of doing things. There was more than one way to be an interesting, awesome person. If I changed - not on purpose, mind you, but as a matter of how things work - then I could be any number of such people. The fact that I have taken so many fantastic forms and am yet to take many more is one of the most exciting facts of my life as I understand it now.

I'm still very young - and when I say "very young", I mean that I am twenty and in a few months will be twenty-one - but I think I understand a few things, and I think that one of those things is that change is not always bad, nor is it always good, but sometimes change is simply a good thing turning into a different good thing. Does that excite you? I hope it does. It excites me.