The beautiful and complicated anatomy of change
Dear Reader,
Apologies for not sending you a (news) letter last week.
A few weeks ago, I was standing in the living room, next to the window to the right of the fireplace above which hangs a painting my mother gave me. By mid-September, the sunlight, instead of shining through the windows in the front, now enters more readily through this side window. I don’t know if the light, in filtering through the branches of the tall mulberry tree and bouncing off the waxy leaves of the neighbor’s old, wide magnolia, gains some powerful magic from them, because when it enters the room through this window, it changes from mere sunlight to a joyful, shimmery being who dances and glows and grants wishes and makes promises you desperately want to believe in. There is not much of a view from here, just the fence separating the neighbor’s house from ours and part of the orange tree, but come September, I like to stand in this corner of the living room and meet the light as it enters the room. The light felt so good I closed my eyes and swayed where I stood. My life has been so hard and I wish… I opened my eyes because I thought I heard someone click their tongue in irritation. There was no one else in the house, I reminded myself, just as I looked up and straight into the eyes of the figure in the painting above the fireplace. He looked the same- over the past forty years, the gold paint on the simple wooden frame has lightened a little as has the brick red background, but he stared back with his usual dispassionate gaze. I closed my eyes and tried to recapture my earlier mood. Still telling yourself the same sad stories? Can’t you see how much has changed? I opened my eyes. I was alone in the room. I tried closing my eyes, but I couldn’t focus on what I wished for. All I could think about was how much had changed.
When I was a young girl, my mother had a black sticker stuck on the inside of her closet. The sticker had this quote on it: “Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.”1 I think change, too, is like a butterfly that you might only notice as it flies away. I wrote about preparing a travel toolkit with my favorite pens and journal before any trip- I was really talking about carrying home in a bag with me while traveling- and right after I published it, I realized I didn’t need it anymore. That I would be okay without it. It was such a weird feeling, to have changed and not known about it. It made me think of the old-school electromechanical (split-flap) display boards at airports- arrivals and departures would click and slide into place with a very satisfying whirring noise. Maybe that’s how change is happening within us all the time.
I’d love to hear what you think.
Best,
Priya
This quote, with a little change in words, is attributed variously to Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
A wonderful reflection on change, Priya.
I especially liked the butterfly story.
It’s such an interesting thing how we (I) chase around happiness or resist change — when if we (I) could just find a way to be grateful for all we have things would certainly appear more wonderful.
The human condition fascinated me haha :)
I often wonder Priya—has “it” changed or have I just changed the view of “it?”
As we change, the view changes and can never be the same.