Change

Oh please, change something. Change something every day. If not every day - which, if you think about it, you probably do already - change something every week, just to change something out of your own volition.

You come into this world a crying mass of meat. With people who care for you, or don't, with people who'll be there for you, or not, and with people who are paid to care for you enough to get you out safely. And you made it this far. Good for you.

You've probably changed a lot since then. You're now much more than a crying mass of meat. You have so much going on in your head and around you, and you care about most of it, you're to be thanked or blamed for some of it, and affected by all of it - and most of the time, in a very different way than you were yesterday.

So I have another game for you. It goes something like this: Choose one thing about yourself, something that has to do with the way you think, or the way you act, or even the way you look. Then make a conscious decision to change it. Think of it from other, realistic angles, until you find one you'd be happy with - either because it would make you a better person, or more appealing to the ones you choose to care about, or just because you can. It's not that hard, usually, not if you find something that's within your power to change.

The scariest thing is the idea itself: Change. Six letters, full of prospects, of good and bad. People fear change, just like people fear the unknown. And what comes after change is unknown, really. You may have a general idea, but you can't really know what things will be like, whatever it is that you may change, until you actually do. You have no prior experience, not you. But it's usually much easier than you may fear - you have nothing to lose... You have your previous experience, and you can always go back to it, richer, with what you just discovered.

Whether you want to change "the way you view that subject" or "the way you care about people you love" or even "the way you spend your day" or "the way you stand", it's not that big a deal, really. There's no such thing as "something bad might happen" or "it might not be worth it". There's no excuse like "I'm too old / young for this" or "I don't know enough about it". You can postpone things, but if you want them to change, the only person that can eventually do it, whenever they want and however they want, is you. And you're the one who will decide on when, how and why. So go ahead.

I've changed a lot over the past few years. And I've always been richer for it. And there's so much I still want to change - the list is practically endless. I just remember, sometimes, how afraid I was a while back, how reluctant I was to make that one step necessary - there's always one step, one turning point for everything - and just take the plunge. I have people to thank, people to blame, things to worry about and things to take care of that I may not have in the past, or in a different life. But this is mine. And, in the areas I care about at least, I plan to change a lot - every single day, at least in one way, until I die. There's no monsters in my closet, last time I checked, and there's not much to fear when I make a change, until I face it.