Changes

As much as I like Bowie's song, my single favorite reference comes from a Dilbert cartoon. "Change is good," Dilbert tells Wally. "You first."

I've been doing lots of thinking lately, and some of it's been about changes in my life and the way others affect me and, presumably, me them. I'm not interested in obvious changes, drastic ones or the ones I plan, but in the more subtle ones, the ones that happen without my being aware of them.

I mean, it's one thing to change my plans and go somewhere when I'd planned on going somewhere else or nowhere at all, but I thnk it's more interesting to try to track the changes I make to fit better with whomever I'm with. That whole "social chamelion" thing, the language and mannerisms I use when I'm with different people.

When I was a teenager I wrote on my ceiling, "What, of what I am, am I?" cause I was one of those heavy thinkkers, you know. I was deep, man.

Now, I'm just too intellectual for my own good so I think about changing in terms of quantum physics, and how it's impossible for anyone to know me without changing me. The closer we get to each other, the more we change each other, and the person to whom I was attracted is a little different than the one I get, and vice versa. I think that's kind of neat.

I changed dramatically when I got married. My ex introduced me to worlds I never considered, and I happyily tagged after her like a faithful puppy, doing what I could to please her. I think I'm a bit mroe firm now, but I still have a host of beliefs and notions I'll drop on a moment's notice, or discount entirely, if they get between me and somebody. Other parts of me, and maybe they're the essential ones, I hold onto more firmly. I don't do a lot of this consciously, but I think I do it.

And sometimes I change myself. I see how other people, better people, act or do things and make an effort to emulate them, or I'm hurting so much from doing things my way that I'm forced into admitting that I'm fucking things up and have to do them a different way.

The worst is when I change to meet someone's hopes, and then lose them entirely in the process.