One day, while parked in the parent pick up line, waiting for the kids to be dismissed from school, the divine writing spirit struck me. What better way to pass the time than to put pen to paper. I grabbed a notebook from the floor in the back of the car, still soggy in some places from the orange pop that spilled on it a few days ago. (I need to do a better job of keeping my car clean, hard with two kids, no doubt.) I found a couple of mostly unsullied, uncompromised pages and let my stream of thoughts flow onto them.

I was writing about change. The change I saw around me, felt within me. I didn’t deem these musings of biblical proportions, but I was proud of my ability to definitively capture something in the moment. I tore those pages out of the notebook, to be typed and uploaded to my website soon…

…which of course turned to later. Much later. The pages migrated from spot to spot. To my nightstand, to the kitchen counter, to the dining room table. And in the process, they got wet, blurring the ink and rendering my sacred thoughts (they gained a special importance the longer I held them) nearly illegible. Then, there was the dog. My special pages were almost ripped to shreds. Saved. My mission gained urgency. I need to type these out as soon as possible! 

The beauty of writing, and of change, is that we also change. Life happens. Thoughts come and go. So, when we revisit what we wrote yesterday, or in this case, almost a year ago, we do so through a slightly different lens. Some of the words make sense; some of the thoughts splinter enough to form branches upon which we can write new leaves. 

I thought I would just type out my “Musings on Change” verbatim, as originally conceived, and post it. As I transcribed the notes, they took the form of three poems centered on three distinct “topics.” Herein lies a beautiful observation. My writings on change CHANGED. The paper physically changed when it got wet. The words changed as I added and subtracted thoughts. And the very structure of the writing itself changed, from one note to three separate but related writings. 

And so, everything changes. Except change. 

The change stays the same.

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