I’ve known this quote for a while now, and it’s delicately landed on the ends of my eyelashes from time to time when I’ve needed to see it. But I’d never unraveled its true meaning or looked closely at the incredible detail of the thoughts that went into creating one string of characters which represent a whole way of understanding the world.
Change, as the one true constant, exists within everything. It has been a main player in everything that has ever played out, it has witnessed all great ‘social change’, been part of every chemical reaction that occurs when we taste a strawberry, been present at the beginning, middle and end of every fairy tale and every horror story, and marvelled at its own great power as the force behind everything that ever is and was.
Never has there ever been a single moment when change is not present. Science will tell us this, and so will history, so will many philosophers but in perhaps more words. If change exists within everything, change can be tickled out of everything. Change rests within every clunky institution, dated way of thinking, or method of governing, and so change can (and must – for the sake of the natural order of things) show itself again.
And it wants to, it just needs us to carry it through.
With change as the one truth, we can know that our efforts are not wasted, we are not the world savers or new world creators, we are not heroines or heroes and should not hope that our efforts will bear any fruit that we can taste within our lifetimes, but we are the agents of change, and positive change, without us to articulate its mysterious language, cannot express itself. If you've got an itch that needs to be scratched let it drive you, let that feeling steer you to the place that change is waiting for a leg up and offer both of your hands. And whilst you're there notice that you are one of many, nudging shoulders with millions of other electrified creatures who are asking and testing if we can play this out in a different way.