The Certainty of Change

My whirlwind weekend tour of Austin has come to a close. After considerable deliberation I decided on Thursday that I would drive down to Austin once I got off work on Friday. My life (and belongings) have been scattered across the globe these past months and I'm slowly trying to reclaim them. Getting down to Austin to try and gather up as much of my stuff as I could was the first step.

(I hadn't really told anyone about my impending visit. I thought it would be more fun as a surprise. This is very ironic given that I'm such a regimented person. Inexplicably I love bestowing and receiving surprises. Perhaps it is my soul rebellion against my head.)

Having been away for just over five months, it was somewhat unexpected to see how much hadn't changed--there were still dishes piled up at the Roost, friends were still drinking too much at parties, the same crowds were at the same places. And strikingly enough those changes I did find seemed mostly small and somewhat inconsequential. Austin is still Austin. It continues to grow and evolve yet it retains its own anima and identity, the one that sets it apart from the rest of Texas and the world--hot and hip, frustrating and amazing--an eternal paradox for me.

Generally, when change occurs, those who see it from a distance view the change as perhaps minor and obvious. Like anything in life it is those affected by change (or an event) that easily feel the enormity of it. Since I'm once again a resident of Arkansas and continue to be separated from the life in Austin, I found it hard to feel the changes.

Changes are made because they are thought to be a positive move. It's rare for anyone to make a change in the hopes of it being negative. It is thus that we go through life. Groping along in the dark we hope that the changes we make will turn out how we want them to. More often than not our changes fall into a gray area somewhere between the two edges of success and failure. We have an amazing ability to convince ourselves that things will work out like they're supposed to, even if they truly do not. Despite the eternal let downs we somehow roll with the changing tides of time. We adapt our mind to fit the circumstances of our current reality.

And so it was with me. As I drove northward from Austin the eternal debate raged on inside my head. Though I'll always miss Austin and my many friends there, I once again felt sure of myself and my decision to live in Arkansas. The question now becomes whether that certainty will last.