A woman with short hair, highlighted with blond and gray streaks, touched my arm. “Sharon?”
Startled, I pulled my arm away from her. Who was this stranger? I peered into her blue eyes, trying to recall when I might have met her.
“Sharon, it’s me. Yvonne.”
Yvonne? I don’t know any Yvonnes. Was she some crazy woman trying to trip me up? “Sorry. How do I know you?”
She put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders sagged. “I guess I look a little different since I saw you last. I put on a lot of weight after my kids were born, and ever since Mike died…” Her words trailed off.
Mike? Yvonne? I dove deep into my memory bank and gazed at her face, trying to look past the lines around her eyes. She had freckles around her nose, and the way she held her chin up when she talked seemed familiar. Yvonne. My once BFF from high school? Could this be her? “Yvonne?”
“Yes! Yes, it’s me! Remember all the sleepovers we had? My hair was this long.” She put her hand on her waist.
Yvonne was beautiful in her youth. Long, voluminous hair that bounced when she walked. In high school, she had a grace and style that everyone envied, including me. “Oh my gosh. So sorry, I didn’t recognize you at first.” I didn’t tell her I still had a hard time wrapping my head around how much she had changed. She asked if I had time for coffee, and we spent about thirty or forty minutes together chatting about our lives. There was too much to cover, but we managed to touch on a few things before my flight was called. Once on board, I reflected on the significant changes I had experienced since our naïve days in high school. No longer young. Forever changed in so many ways. Stark contrasts in the fundamental differences of our lives.
Change: make something different; to alter or modify; replace with something else; transform. It’s happening all the time; every second of every day of every week of every month of every year. What was I thinking? That the people I knew then would somehow look the same decades later?
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously asserted that “no man steps in the same river twice.” Meaning that both the person and the river are constantly changing. Aristotle declared that there are two kinds of change: substantial change and accidental change. Substantial change is when something transforms into something else; for instance, a tree is cut down and made into a table. A puddle of water becoming larger after a rainstorm would be an example of accidental change. Stoics like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius further developed the concept of change to encompass cultivating inner resilience and virtue to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life. The Buddha taught that change is the fundamental truth of existence, emphasizing that all things are in a constant state of change: the aging of our bodies, the changing seasons, the rise and fall of our emotions, the transitoriness of relationships.
So, even though I should know all this, it surprised me when I had difficulty accepting such an obvious change in someone I had once known. Come to think of it, it happens every time I look in the mirror. People change. Things change. Or as Heraclitus once said a few thousand years ago, “There is nothing permanent except change.”
Enjoy the Passage of Time.
Sharon
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