Still the same old me

Recently, I met up with some old friends. Having not seen most of them for at least a year, everyone seemed to have changed a lot.

Everyone, except me.

One friend even said to me, “You haven’t changed at all, you are still the same after so many years.”

Should I be happy about this? Or should I be sad?

If someone has changed a lot, it probably means that he has experienced a lot of things and advanced a lot in life. If after many years, one has not changed much, he would appear as if he is stagnated at the same spot.

How boring and unexciting.

Frankly, I do not really like the feeling of being “stagnant”. It somehow seems to mean that one has not progressed much. Well, I guess this has to do with the modern notion of relating progress with change. Of course, a person can certainly progress without having appeared to have changed. In fact, a lot of people are like that.

Changes can occur in a lot of different areas such as appearance, thinking and character wise, but changes to one’s appearance are always the most noticeable. To be able to “detect” that a person has changed in terms of thinking and character would require much more observation and conversation.

A friend commented that someone she knows is quite particular about the way people view her and she feels strongly against remaining the same old manner. If she were to meet up with friends she had not seen in a long time, she would do something to her outward appearance so that she would look changed, or at least create a sparkle in others’ eyes.

I guess I am more of the let-nature-takes-its-own-course kind of person and I am pretty much happy the way I am. In a nutshell, although I do not like to remain too stagnant, I do not want to make changes just for the sake of making changes. Changes, I feel, should take place naturally.

Everyone and everything in this world is probably impermanent. Every little bit of experience in life moulds a person and I guess everyone changes in some way or another over time, whether big changes or minute ones, over-the-night changes or gradual transformations. If you have not noticed any changes in a person, perhaps you need to "look" harder and show a bit more concern.

Would you rather the friends whom you have not seen in some time to have changed a lot or not at all?

Sometimes, I feel it is easier to talk to an old friend whom I have not seen in a while, who is still like the way he was when I last knew him. If he had changed a lot, it would probably be difficult to pick up where we had last left off, and it would sound as if we are chatting as familiar strangers.

Sometime ago, I posed the above question to a group of friends.

Quoting a friend’s response, “It does not really matter. If your friends have not changed, then so be it. If they have changed, it is alright too, as long as the change is for the better. ”

True enough.

If you have changed, try to embrace the change. If there are hardly any changes, learn to embrace the same old you for that. The same goes for your friends too.