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judecorpPeople change. I guess that's one of life's little inevitabilities. People begin changing from the moment they're born. I have the privilege of seeing and monitoring change in little people every day. This morning I did an assessment on a 7-month-old. I've worked with her for a month, and in that time her gross motor skills have exploded. How exciting!
When children are small, every little change is monitored and carefully noted for posterity. As we get older, those little changes and adjustments often go unnoticed. And it's not even like we're not paying attention, it just happens. No one is watching us like a hawk and taking stock in our personal milestones. Everyone is so busy living their own day-to-day lives, I suppose. Myself included.
It's funny how you can hang out with someone for years and their little changes don't register with you because they've happened so gradually and you've had a chance to adjust unconsciously. You and your friends change side-by-side, and the end result is just another day, another memory. It's those distant friends that bring the reality of change home to you, those friends and family members for whom you have not had the opportunity to catch all the micro-adjustments of life.
Inside myself, I feel like the same person I've always been. My heart beats both with the same blood and the same passions. My head buzzes with the same thoughts, the same ideals, the same quirks and anxieties. I like the same music, the same movies, the same books. I hug the same way, kiss the same way, offer the same caring tone of voice. Sure, there have been shifts, adjustments. Life has happened. Growth has happened. Time has aged me alongside everyone else.
But I'm lost, somewhat, in that sea of people whom have all matured alongside one another while I adventured in another land. I realize we've all changed and I wonder who has grown out of touch? I'm inclined to think it is me, and I'm willing to take that blame. But how do I rectify that sort of inconsistency? With what can I cross that sort of chasm?
There are no events that have left me out of touch more than others. There is no discernible cause. I am a person who loves, who thinks, who breathes, who experiences. My love has not changed, only the person I choose to give it to. My life has not changed, only the order of priorities. There is no one who has ever known me who does not know me now. I just wish I was not the only one who sees this.
When children are small, every little change is monitored and carefully noted for posterity. As we get older, those little changes and adjustments often go unnoticed. And it's not even like we're not paying attention, it just happens. No one is watching us like a hawk and taking stock in our personal milestones. Everyone is so busy living their own day-to-day lives, I suppose. Myself included.
It's funny how you can hang out with someone for years and their little changes don't register with you because they've happened so gradually and you've had a chance to adjust unconsciously. You and your friends change side-by-side, and the end result is just another day, another memory. It's those distant friends that bring the reality of change home to you, those friends and family members for whom you have not had the opportunity to catch all the micro-adjustments of life.
Inside myself, I feel like the same person I've always been. My heart beats both with the same blood and the same passions. My head buzzes with the same thoughts, the same ideals, the same quirks and anxieties. I like the same music, the same movies, the same books. I hug the same way, kiss the same way, offer the same caring tone of voice. Sure, there have been shifts, adjustments. Life has happened. Growth has happened. Time has aged me alongside everyone else.
But I'm lost, somewhat, in that sea of people whom have all matured alongside one another while I adventured in another land. I realize we've all changed and I wonder who has grown out of touch? I'm inclined to think it is me, and I'm willing to take that blame. But how do I rectify that sort of inconsistency? With what can I cross that sort of chasm?
There are no events that have left me out of touch more than others. There is no discernible cause. I am a person who loves, who thinks, who breathes, who experiences. My love has not changed, only the person I choose to give it to. My life has not changed, only the order of priorities. There is no one who has ever known me who does not know me now. I just wish I was not the only one who sees this.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 05:57 am (UTC)Life is about lessons. The people we interact with on a daily basis are lessons embodied in flesh and bone. We live. We love. We learn. We move on.
It's natural, and almost essential, to personal growth to experience that separation.
We burn brightly and wink out, and away.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 11:31 am (UTC)I guess I've been ruminating more about a conversation I was having with Jen in the car this evening: I've heard several comments in the last few weeks? month? or so in reference to "my new life" which in this case is meant to mean something akin to 'my lesbian life' or the life I'm living in my new relationship.
I suppose that bothers me somewhat because there isn't (and wasn't) some phenomenal change when my serious relationship to Aaron ended and my serious relationship with Jen began (and all of the dating and foolery in between). In fact, the relationships are quite similar, and their affects on me are also quite similar. We're creatures of habit, and I think we conduct ourselves in relationships in very similar ways unless we consciously make major changes. Patterns - we all have patterns.
It's a personal irritation, and not something that runs my life or my friendships, to think about some people's belief that I've become this dramatically different person that they can't understand/relate to/get used to because I've "gone gay."
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 01:48 pm (UTC)But if you look at it from the outside... the giddy, happy, bouncy person I used to know has mellowed into an adult. And I missed the transitioning...
A lot of the transitioning. Almost 6 years.
Like when people see my kids, and they remember Johnny as a hyper 4 year old, running around and begging for attention. And then they come visit us today. Five years has passed. We have TWO kids. And the Johnny they remember is the Paul we have.
I don't think you've BECOME anything. I don't think that loving Jen makes you a different person. But I do see that the memories I have of you no longer match the person you have become today.
Just so you know, we love you loads.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-16 10:56 pm (UTC)there was a Judie and now there is a Jude
Well, really, there's just a person who has gotten older and didn't really like the diminutive moniker. Just like perhaps someday Johnny won't want to be called Johnny anymore. Judie just sounds so babyish to me. I know there are adult women all over the place named Judy/Judi/Judie, I just don't really want to be one of them. My dad and grandparents still call me that, though - I think that makes it feel like even more of a kid name.
peircings, clothing styles
I have the same clothes I've been wearing since high school, for the most part. :) Occasionally I buy something new, but not too often. (And when was the last time you saw me before now? Because I had quite a few piercings in college.)
But if you look at it from the outside... the giddy, happy, bouncy person I used to know has mellowed into an adult.
The sad, sad truth of it all, April, is that it's not adulthood and mellowness that has brought on this change. I was that giddy, happy, bouncy person you're talking about just a few months ago. I'm just really, really unhappy right now with some things in my life and am trying to plod through it. I hope that someday, that fun-loving person you remember and liked very much will be back. In fact, that's all I'm focusing on these days.
The funny thing about memories is that they don't ever have to change. You don't have to feel bad about or weird about me not being like your memories of when I was in college. You just need to hang out with me and have conversations with me and make new memories. (And then those will become outdated, too, with time.)
You know that you are not the April I knew in college, either. You are a woman, a wife, a mother of two, a homemaker, an amazing crafter, and someone who gets things done. That's a long leap from the girl I met in 1994! I guess that I just don't put a lot of stock in memories. I like having them and keeping them safe, but I'd rather get to know April2004 than hold on to April1994, LaGrange edition. :)
Philosophy for a Thursday
Date: 2004-09-17 02:57 am (UTC)Not to cut too small a slice here, but the blood in your veins is not the same as it was thirty days ago. Your skin regenerates itself every seven years or so. My point is that change is inevitable.
The things that you believe in might not change. The things that make you smile, or get you out of the bed in the morning might never change. But the world is in constant flux, and since you're part of the swirling, out of control cosmos, you are victim to the same laws. Entropy gets us in the end. Time ticks on, and (I think) as we age, our hearing becomes more acute, and we hear that clock more clearly.
I used to embrace change -- partly because of my beliefs, partly for the sake of adventure -- but mostly to embrace change was to grow. Sometimes, the growing I did I did not care for in its results. But the mere chance to grow was too great a positive to stop.
I admit it -- sometimes I miss Judie. But I'm still drawn to Jude's journal. I get a huge kick out of the fact that you've found so much about yourself. I like the changes. I like the becoming.
Re: Philosophy for a Thursday
Date: 2004-09-18 02:28 am (UTC)But then I get to the end and I'm so irked that I nearly forget all the beautiful poetry. I admit it -- sometimes I miss Judie. This is exactly what I was railing about up top! What the heck does it mean?
It's like everyone is attributing a NAME to memories of my life at 20. This isn't a soap opera: my name is not something exotic like Marlena and I didn't fake my own death for attention. So many people act like there is this separate person named "Judie" that used to exist when I was 20 and now is gone, daddy, gone. That's ludicrous.
That's like me saying, "I kind of like this guy
I guess I just don't get it. What do comments like, "I miss Judie," really mean? I mean, people can frame it as poetically as they like, but all it makes me think is that they just plain don't like /me/, they like some memory of me from when I was a kid - a memory that has probably been romanticized heavily over the years.
There is no person called "Judie" that is buried in a box somewhere in the back of my closet. I don't like the name because it makes me feel too young (Marky) and babyish. But I'm not in the Witness Protection Program, I didn't create a new identity, and I'm not some brand new rock star.
/rant off (And I apologize for sounding harsh. I'm sure it sounds harsher in text than it really is, but also, that comment totally ticked me off.)
Re: Philosophy for a Thursday
Date: 2004-09-18 03:02 am (UTC)My point is that the person changed -- but the essence of that person did not change. The things you and I talk about today are often radically different than we used to that first summer. But in the final analysis, the things that made me seek you out that first summer are still the things that make me an LJ flunkie today. I spend more time perusing your entries than entering my own.
All I'm saying is that the person I know now is someone I want to stay in touch with, rather than the one I encountered all those years ago. There is real depth there, and you have grown, whereas a lot of people that I encountered then, I don't care to stay in contact with now.
I also understand that you do not feel it is fair to refer to you in binaries. My mistake might be that there was such a long gap of time between the active interaction we had during Philmont, and the new interaction we have now. Thus, the seperation.
I feel, at the end of the day, though, that you are an even happier person than you were in the late ninties (what a horrible thing to say -- I sound like an old person: Back in my day...). I think you've come through all of the stuff with A. stronger and happier, and there are not many people that can say that. I also think that you're in a fantastic relationship with a wonderful person. I think I was trying to give credit were credit was due, but it came out garbled, and for that, I am sorry.
Re: Philosophy for a Thursday
Date: 2004-09-29 01:32 am (UTC)And I can see your point that there is a separation of some sort in your mind, because we haven't seen each other in many years. Also, we only got back in touch on a regular basis recently. I suppose I hadn't thought of that.
So I guess I have to cut you a little slack, B!
Death By Change
Date: 2004-09-18 12:42 pm (UTC)Hair, nails, teeth.. they fall out and grow back again.
If you stopped what you are, in a while you'd be pure again.
That's what a body is.
It'd be too horrible for words if it weren't.
Fusanosuke, Akira Kurosawa's "The Sea is Watching"
Yeah, I know I stole that from an earlier entry in my own LJ, but it seemed like a good place to start.
Bear in mind my feelings on this matter are exactly -my- feelings, and I don't doubt that the question you've raised is very much a 'this is life as I've lived it' question. I can't imagine most or even many people would agree with my answer to it, and I'm not sure I'd even want that to be the case.
As with any other snarky bitch that walks in halfway through the conversation and has a chance to see everyone else's response, mine is probably closest to a cunning blend of everyone else's- but please, dear Jude, as the one who helped to christen you as you are now, rest assured that I held this view before today.
Jude is dead. Long live Jude.
We are, individual differences notwithstanding, a good 10 or 20 people in our lifetime, and yet, we are the same. If we take the Buddhist model of reincarnation- a persistent underlying soul assuming hundreds or thousands of progressive lifetimes over the course of its yearning toward enlightenment- this isn't such a difficult statement. One might almost say that our individual incarnations function not unlike the vast 'lifetime' of our soul in microcosm.
Recently (this summer), I've found the best and most useful metaphor to me in getting a personal grasp on my transition has been to look outward at larger transitions- including the biggie, Death. What I'm undergoing is not unlike death. When I'm all through my life as it is now will be over, and as far as the world will be concerned, an entirely different person is on the scene. I'll have memories of my past life, for certain, but they'll only be able to apply indirectly to the person I'll be then- useful experience I can apply to future situations, but no longer self-referential ones. There'll still be a certain something that's trademark Me, and only the people with strong, intimate personal connections to my old self will be able to recognize me. That's rather like death and, if you choose to believe it, regressive memory.
The reason I like this model is because I feel it's a workable one for pretty much any kind of change in identity, gradual or slow. You are not the person you were in high school, and you can't ever be again. That person will never come back, will never see the world the way she did, will never talk or walk the same or have the same views. Much like when loved ones die, we look back on these passed-away selves with a sense of rosy nostalgia, generally tend to overlook their faults (or are forgiving of the ones we acknowledge), and wish they were here again.
Likewise our response to our own impending deaths by change, we may act in several common ways. We may kick and scream and fuss, change messily and painfully, and resist it to the end (and, if we're strong-willed enough, forestall it a little bit longer). We may calmly and quietly accept its inevitability, place our affairs in order, and prepare the people and things around us for the passing of our self. We may even hurl ourselves with eager zeal on the fire in a self-destructive orgy, make certain that our end is irrevocable and complete, and then walk around with our new job, haircut, mailing address, or wedding ring loudly trumpeting the death of our former.
You are the same person only if those with karmic ties can reach back into their primordial memories and connect those basics to the woman standing before them. Otherwise, our present incarnations are too fast, too demanding, too intense and challenging of our own selves to forge an instant connection to a relative stranger.
I've never even met the current Jude. I can barely tell you what she looks like (mostly through photographs on here, and I'm still only taking their word). I've heard her voice once, and that's about it. But I knew her in a past life. I knew her very, very well, and I owe it to our collective souls to maintain that connection.
Jude is dead. Long live Jude.
Re: Death By Change
Date: 2004-09-18 01:42 pm (UTC)The events you describe happen to everyone, and I am amenable to that. We all change. That's reality. We all change and grow and mature and regress and find joy and find sorrow and experience loss and gain. All of these events leave little imprints on our souls until our souls take on different shapes. In fact, every event, every dent, is a different shape. We are always dying and being reborn, in your model.
I can dig that.
If everyone who commented felt the way you do, I don't think I would mind much. If they sat down and said to me, "Wow, you've changed so much since you lived here last, and so have I. We've grown quite different - let's find the similarities and start over!" I think I would be overjoyed to have returned here. In fact, I think that's what I expected when we moved back... because that's what I would have done. And it's what I imagine you and I will do quite a bit when we see each other next. Sure, our karmic selves will find those old ties, but it is up to us to find those new ties or we're doomed to speak only of prior events and scramble to make connections.
I don't mind being seen as someone in a constant state of change, someone who is not the same person this morning as I was yesterday morning. But I do not like being seen as someone who at only one point in history underwent a change of unfathomable magnitude, sealed up the old identity, discarded it, created another out of randomness, and established it as reality. And all because I got divorced and dated a bunch of great girls.
To use your model, my brief opinion on the whole matter is this: when someone callously says, "But I miss Judie," I know in my heart that they have no desire to know me outside of a faded snapshot, and no guts to take some of that responsibility on themselves for misplacing their karmic connection.