The Only Constant Thing

I realized something funny the other day (it’s exam time, which explains all the deep and unrelated-to-syllabus philosophizing). It’s something I have observed about my time in law school, but I guess it holds true for most other places, and the larger picture of life also.

When I came into law school, I was all energetic and enthusiastic about my relationships with people, anxious to make a good impression, anxious to make good friends, genuinely concerned about the lives and worries of all people I associated with. I took it upon myself to make the lives of people I was close to better. I also came across people who I thought would need my help, and tried to make their lives better, bring about a change. I realize how presumptuous I sound, and I guess I was, back then. But the intentions were genuinely honest. I believed I could make things better, make people happier. And I zealously embarked on this mission of bringing about change.

Sometime in the middle, after having been faced by disappointment on several counts (not the least for the basic stupidity of my mission and my pompous assumption that I had it in me to change everyone around me according to what I felt they needed), the tempo of my spree slowed down considerably. I then started to focus on people who asked for my help.
As would be evident to the reader from the general tenor of this post, even this was rather unsuccessful an attempt. I slowly started coming to terms with the fact that most people didn’t want to change. And that perhaps I was flawed myself in too many ways to actually have the ability to change them.

After this came a phase where I tried to hold on to the person I was, ensure that I didn’t change into something I had never been and didn’t want to be. I would tenaciously hold on to the person I was pre-law school, the person who I thought was nicer and pleasanter than the person circumstances were pushing me into becoming. If you look back at this blog, I guess you can see a lot of reflections of this thought. About how I did not want to become an escapist, about how I could see through the shallow, ill-tempered, aggressive person I was fast becoming.

In the last phase, it’s largely exhaustion I felt from trying to hold on for so long. So I let go. I don’t know if I managed to change anyone, I don’t know if I retained any part of what I used to be, but what I do know is that change is inevitable, and I learnt that it’s most often changes in you that you observe over time. From fighting to change others, to fighting change in myself, I have finally come to terms with, or at least acknowledged, that it’s finally I who is now different. For better or for worse.