Change

This one is a bit long winded, but I trust you'll bear with me...

Only one month left till I'm out of my house, living in halls next to 500 strangers and far far away from everything I've gotten so used to.

Change is a great thing. If everything stayed the same forever, there'd be no fun, and we'd get pretty tired of the repetition. Staying in my childhood home would make me a pretty stunted and underexposed adult, not to mention the green wallpaper is starting to do my head in... 

But at some point I have to wonder, when is the change going to end?

All of our lives is growing, adapting and restarting. I always assumed it was for some greater purpose: some goal that can only be accomplished after a certain number of evolutions, like a boss fight you need more levels to beat. But is that fight ever coming? 

I think something that sucks about growing up always having to change yourself is that some people never bother, and still get by just fine picking on the underlings. I've put a lot of work into being an alright person, but there'll always be people out there who are twenty times worse and put in no work, yet still live free and enjoyable lives. "That's no fair", screams the temperamental moral compass inside of me!

So I suppose being a developing and self accounting person has to have its own rewards, or why else would we do it?

I guess it must feel a bit crummy not to try to be a better person. Or I have to believe that, otherwise the people who've hurt me are just living large, scot-free from consequence. Or more realistically, everyone's trying to change, and it's just harder to see from an outside perspective.

One month until I'm somewhere new, having to change again and again, probably endlessly. Is there a final form? And why is it we have to keep working to be better people, and the people who hurt us can enjoy guilt-free, happy lives? 

I guess there's a couple ways to approach that.

The first is that nothing is so clear cut as 'good' and 'bad'. When I talk about myself trying to improve, that's only because I was given the tools to reflect on who I am and try to change that for the better. Others aren't taught those skills of self-reflection, and that doesn't mean they're trying to be bad. There are no clear cut categories of 'good' and 'evil', as much as my brain raised on video games and movies wants there to be.

And the other way the see it is that improvement isn't transactional. That trying to be a better person doesn't earn you reward, and is a choice you make out of empathy for the people around you who have to deal with you every day. I hope I can continue to improve and adapt, because I owe it to everyone around me, and I know that being more open-minded and resilient is a change I've made that has allowed to see things more clearly.

Those might not be very revolutionary takes, but they're honest and what's on my mind as of late. I don't have a very flashy or beautiful way to wrap this up, but I hope you understand what I mean. I think both sides are right, and it can suck to feel like there's no end to the work of constantly changing and finding new ways to be... but everyone is trying, and that's pretty beautiful by itself.