Be the change.

All good things must come to an end. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Change is in the wind. Time changes all things.

Nothing remains the same, no matter how much you might want it to. Every day, every second, we are changing. Gravity is pulling. Life is pushing. The planet is moving and we move with it. Moments are frozen in photographs, in memories. But, often, what we see in our mind’s eye, in the printed photograph (or, more likely, in the digital one on our computer) is a reminder of what is past, what has changed.

Some change we welcome. Some change we recognize as being a vital necessity in moving forward, in simply continuing to live. And some, we beg for a rewind.

There’s no rewinding life. There isn’t even a pause button.

“Don’t ever change." A typical yearbook sign-off. Does anyone really want that? Would we want to be who we were at seventeen forever? Would we want those around us to truly not change? I don’t want to be who I was at seventeen, or even twenty-seven. Yet I can remember moments from both of those years of recognizing change and desperately wanting everything to remain the same. I thank God it didn't. I know exactly where I would be if nothing had changed from when I was seventeen. It wouldn't be pretty.

We can't look back at all change and say that. Sometimes things change and we don't know why, and maybe we never will, but perhaps it's because we can’t see the full picture yet. Maybe we will in the moment before death. Maybe not.

But just as there is no pause and no rewind, there is also no fast forward. We can't see the future. So maybe the changes that come our way are meant to be. Maybe without them, we'd never get to wherever it is we are supposed to be.

I have a ring with this quote from Gandhi inscribed on it: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is the change we should pursue, and the change we should embrace. Our own conscious changes to make the world a better place than it was before we came along. Even if it's just our own small world. If we approached each day wondering how we might make life a little better for someone else, for those we care for (and for those we don't - a difficult, but important, task) instead of thinking about how we might make our own lives better, I think our own lives would, inherently, unmistakably, be better.