This is not for you. Neither is House of Leaves but that's for another day. What you are about to witness is a great leap in myself. I, since I have to start thinking about these things, am going to Free Style a college essay that I will probably shorten and edit and clean up. Perhaps I'll even use it! Anyways, here goes nothing.
As essays go, a common question is, "Write about one experience that you feel changed your life." Though it may be worded differently, all forms of this question carry that basic meaning. And as the admissions officers plow through the seemingly endless piles of these essays, they will no doubt discover many interesting and embarrassing anecdotes that "changed" the prospective students life. What they may or may not realize is that what they have just read is a lie. Little Sally Jones may very well have traveled to Nicaragua and built houses, that isn't the falsehood. The falsehood lies in the very nature of the question. Lives do not travel in straight lines until they reach a certain experience. That's the falsehood. What many do not realize is that life is a process and a journey. My life, your life, everybody's life is in a constant state of flux. Everything that is done, everything that is observed, said, felt, touched, seen, tasted, heard-everything changes your life. These little events may change things in a small way, but it's impossible to calculate the impact that it will have on the rest of this person's life.
I believe that our lives are in a constant state of evolution. I believe that at this moment, here at my computer, I am being pulled along by the subtle currents of life. Things make impressions, just as we do. Something as simple as looking out of a window on a plane may inspire a lifelong desire to fly. Or it may last for a week. Or it may terrify the child so much that they begin to have those nightmares where you fall and fall and you close your eyes and you are still falling until you fall into you sunlight bathed bed in the morning.
What happens in these so called, "life changing moments" is simple. It's not that our lives suddenly shift. It's not that the world suddenly inverts and begins spewing sludge. It is simple that we realize. Suddenly we stop, take a look around, and breathe it all in. And we realize how far we've come from the starting gate. How far we have yet to go. And we realize that we are no longer the same person. Our life doesn't change, our life is change. We are just realizing that it happens. So I suppose the question that I'm answering is, "What is life and what causes change?" And the answer is simple. Life is change. We are the change.
I have no idea where this went.
Sorry,
Daisuke
