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Streaks of red cloud across the sky, and the sun, a firey red ceramic plate slowly slipping down. The shift of the clouds in the wind, the gently creeping swaths of color, the feel of the cool breeze on your face. The change, slow and inevitable, from gold light, to orange, to carmine, to purple twilight, to starry night. The clouds--new shapes, new shades, each more fantastic than the last.
Freeze. One moment, held captive, stretched out to last an eternity. The most beautiful, the most varied of the painted clouds, the freshness of the evening breeze, the glow that seems to make everything extraordinary, to lift it above the prosaic. Surely this moment could last forever, could keep its beauty. It could express all the beauty of the sunset. Right?
But you sit there watching. You feel the same breeze touch the same spot on your cheek, over and over again. That one purple spot stays... and stays. The sun never quite leaves, never lets twilight come. You're stuck, in a perpetual world of colors and arrested movement. How could that show even a fraction of the dynamic beauty you see?
The sunset's wonder comes in the seamless transition between two seeming opposites. It comes when the clouds move, and the colors change, and the sun sinks. Take away the change, the movement, and it is cut off.
Remember the best moment you had in the last week. If you could live in that moment, or in the euphoria it brought, for the rest of your life--would it be worth it? Would it be worth it not to change?
Change is a part of living. Humans, and nature itself, simply were not meant to stand still and brood, or even to stand still in seeming perfection. Our lives seem to take every possible opportunity to throw this fact at us; we quarrel with a friend, we make it up; we coast along in our studies, we suddenly hit a roadblock. The cycles of nature make this clear. There is no eternal spring in this world, not in nature and not in our lives. We cannot prolong our pleasant times indefinitely.
Change may be necessary, but it doesn't mean that it's always pleasant. It represents a deviation from that pleasant world that we have arranged for ourselves, in which everything works the way that we always intended that it would, and if it doesn't--oh well. We can deal with it without disturbing our equilibrium too much. But something inevitably happens to shake up our complacency. Maybe it's a friend's chance remark that pushes us into doubt that our course is the right one. Or perhaps the time in our lives has simply come that requires that we move, expand, grow.
The prospect of graduation is exhilerating but at the same time frightening. For many seniors, it represents an imminent change to a world that is largely unknown, a world that requires--not grants--independence and maturity. This change is no one's fault. It simply happens.
In chemistry, a transition state is the configuration with the highest energy, that bridges between the starting materials and the products. It is short-lived, unstable, and cannot be isolated because it is so fleeting. It seems to me that, at times, our responses to the changing forces in our lives are similar. We may not always welcome change, but it comes whether we invite it or not, bringing tension, anxiety, and discomfort, but also a much-needed variety. It should be accepted, because sooner or later, it comes to everything, and it brings beauty.
Freeze. One moment, held captive, stretched out to last an eternity. The most beautiful, the most varied of the painted clouds, the freshness of the evening breeze, the glow that seems to make everything extraordinary, to lift it above the prosaic. Surely this moment could last forever, could keep its beauty. It could express all the beauty of the sunset. Right?
But you sit there watching. You feel the same breeze touch the same spot on your cheek, over and over again. That one purple spot stays... and stays. The sun never quite leaves, never lets twilight come. You're stuck, in a perpetual world of colors and arrested movement. How could that show even a fraction of the dynamic beauty you see?
The sunset's wonder comes in the seamless transition between two seeming opposites. It comes when the clouds move, and the colors change, and the sun sinks. Take away the change, the movement, and it is cut off.
Remember the best moment you had in the last week. If you could live in that moment, or in the euphoria it brought, for the rest of your life--would it be worth it? Would it be worth it not to change?
Change is a part of living. Humans, and nature itself, simply were not meant to stand still and brood, or even to stand still in seeming perfection. Our lives seem to take every possible opportunity to throw this fact at us; we quarrel with a friend, we make it up; we coast along in our studies, we suddenly hit a roadblock. The cycles of nature make this clear. There is no eternal spring in this world, not in nature and not in our lives. We cannot prolong our pleasant times indefinitely.
Change may be necessary, but it doesn't mean that it's always pleasant. It represents a deviation from that pleasant world that we have arranged for ourselves, in which everything works the way that we always intended that it would, and if it doesn't--oh well. We can deal with it without disturbing our equilibrium too much. But something inevitably happens to shake up our complacency. Maybe it's a friend's chance remark that pushes us into doubt that our course is the right one. Or perhaps the time in our lives has simply come that requires that we move, expand, grow.
The prospect of graduation is exhilerating but at the same time frightening. For many seniors, it represents an imminent change to a world that is largely unknown, a world that requires--not grants--independence and maturity. This change is no one's fault. It simply happens.
In chemistry, a transition state is the configuration with the highest energy, that bridges between the starting materials and the products. It is short-lived, unstable, and cannot be isolated because it is so fleeting. It seems to me that, at times, our responses to the changing forces in our lives are similar. We may not always welcome change, but it comes whether we invite it or not, bringing tension, anxiety, and discomfort, but also a much-needed variety. It should be accepted, because sooner or later, it comes to everything, and it brings beauty.
