The Power of Change :: Personal Narrative Writing

The Power of ChangeMy best friends ex-boyfriend used to tell her thats the difference between you and meyoure a tree and Im a blade of grass. Youre problem, he would say, (apparently never having learned that starting morose any piece of advice with your problem is the kiss of death) your problem is that you need to learn to bend. He might have questi onenessd his desire to have her heed such advice approximately months later after she dumped him for his best friend and tossed the shredded bits of his domain into thousands of irreparable pieces. And, as clich as his words of guidance may seem, I have today begun to think him rather astute, for in the months that followed their separation my friend transformed her behaviors in the most fundamental and opposing ways she traveled more, replaced her old job with one she actually liked, gave herself over to the pleasures of a most memorable one night stand, and today smiles randomly and with more charm than I have ever remembered. It is a fiction that we become slight spontaneous and more rigid as we get older, that we are all blithe and adaptable children. As for me, I hate change as a child, resisted it like a dry naked body would sliding down a fire pole. I experienced individually new thing as a betrayal. A new friend in the circle meant, not more love to go around, just less time for the old ones. It also meant going off the course, entering something unseen, welcoming an unknowable unfolding. Change was not transformation. It was exchange this for that an end for a beginning. How we come into this world that is the state in which we arrive is a complete mystery to me. While other children, my siblings included, relished new pets, or a new piece of furniture for their chamber or the hope of a family vacation, I capitulated to a kind of juvenile asceticism. When I was eight I spent the whole of a trip to Disney founding grumpy and brooding, not because I wanted something I was denied, but because I s ensed that in the excitement that fueled everyone else that in that exodus from our routine of coach and homework and sports and homemade dinners there was the prospect that anything could happen. And anything could change everything.