Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self, in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes. – James Baldwin
Did you ever wonder why it seems so hard to change? Have you ever met a friend who seems radically different from the way you used to know them and you find yourself relating to them like they hadn’t changed at all? Or found it uncomfortable, if not impossible, to greet them from beginner’s mind? Or maybe you felt like you changed, but no one is taking the time to meet the new you – interactions are based on rehashing old history until the new you is once again covered in the dust of history.
Changes by Max Gail
One day I found a brand new me whom some of my friends couldn’t see
was every bit as real a guy as the more familiar I.
But with an unfamiliar script which told them surely I had flipped
or else was going through some stage which soon Id drop and act my age
as if my age weren’t just a fact, but really something I should act.
They thought that who we really are was only who we’d been so far.
Well, I must say it was a shock to find these friends a stumbling block
along the way to all the me’s I hope will put my mind at ease.
I wasn’t trying to scare or dare or show myself as more aware
but merely trying to share my thoughts and clear the air of
shoulds and oughts.
It seems that staying just the same is really just a hopeless game
played to show that you’re for real instead of feeling what you feel.
Instead of following our hearts, we check ourselves and play the part
that parents wrote with loving pains and planted in our infant brains.
If change is something I must do, I guess my friends must change some too.
So – I must learn to leave them free to misconstrue a truth in me
‘cuz words are words and never deeds and sometimes time is all one needs
to understand a changing friend and let the newest colors blend.
So I must learn to stay alone and dig these new me’s on my own
until they’re such a part of me, they’re something any fool can see.
And learn to see that such a chasm was caused by my ENTHUSIASM!