The Road To Change

Change is a transition. If you are like me, you can recall times of change in your life; that time when you knew the rest of your life would be different. Maybe it was an instant change, dramatic and full of senses. Others might experience change over time, like the ocean tide rolling across an exposed rock peaking out of the sand.

Change can be uncomfortable for many. Each of us feels change differently, and likens it to something we can perceive. In order to cope with the change, we look around us and inside of us to find thoughts, feelings or experiences we can relate to the change.

I have always experienced change through the roads I travel, stretches of highways or scenic routes meandering on to some end. I suppose it is the physical manifestation of leaving one life and meeting another, or perhaps the long distance between these two points allowing me an extended time of reflection.

My changes are marked by the blurring of trees rushing to meet me as I look out the side window, and simply washing over me as if I were laying in that ocean tide on the beach. In that time of transition, I reflect upon things to this point and onwardly imagine what life might be in my ‘new life’. It is never the same as my imagination, I know this, but it passes the time and calms my nerves.

As I approach my final destination, a lump climbs up from the pit of my stomach. I step out, and taste the weather – sometimes cold and crisp on the tip of my tounge; sometimes thick and heady, as the summers of the south often are. My senses are accute, rolling over everthing within distance.

Change has come to settle here, it bristles around me. A stiff nod of the head, a shake of the hand, an exchange of some words… I am here. It is time to embrace where I am and put away where I was. Change has come, not with a roar, but as the whispering of rubber on asphalt.

I will leave you with one of my favorite poems, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost: