My Life As A Flux Capacitor

Change is an acquired taste. It starts with the big minor ones - say, the replacement of milk with permanent teeth. Then paradigm shifts get freakier, the move from one school to another with corresponding loss of existing social circles. The loss of a best friend. The upturning of a life when a parent leaves.

What becomes certain is how change is relentless, so much that stillness becomes a luxury to be cherished whenever it appears. She said: "When you realise that change is all part of your job, your life will get much easier."

But when my life is filled with change anyway, I think, then shifts in a series of daily tasks are just one more thing I have to contend with. I want stillness. Just for a year. Heck, I'd settle for a couple of days. Time to catch my breath from the maelstrom of loss, upturns, downturns, lateral shifts and general topsy turvy. I want the luxury of nothingness because I cannot write off my life in serial changes with no connecting thread except the flux itself. The addition of each stroke to a masterpiece takes thought and consideration, with a view to evolve, to deepen the meaningfulness of each exchange. I have no time to make a masterpiece of my life, no space to apply a philosophy for living, no focus on a major because too many minors get in my way.

My life as a flux capacitor, as merely a conduit to manage upheavals, feels utilitarian. All too functional. A whiteboard with no permanent markings, but a series of ink stains to be erased with each fresh onslaught of changes. Yet what truly frightens me is perhaps the notion that when everything finally does stay still, that I will not know what to do.

Flux is a state of the environment, of external forces beyond our control: the weather, death, natural disasters, Acts of God, that sort of thing. But one has to wonder why some lives are dogged so often with risks insurance companies underwrite, while others seem to achieve forward movement with minimal derailment. I wonder if the art of this organic gliding eludes flux capacitors such as I.

I am not sure I will ever acquire a taste for change without evolution. Maybe I choose not to.