change

Every 7 years or so your body has completely recycled itself. The rates of cellular reproduction and cellular death are pretty much the same for most of your life. People are literally re-born in slow motion continuously. Life--reality--is ever-changing, ever-renewing. I often look back and recognize the person I was just some years ago as distinct from who I believe myself to be right now. Life is a process. So often we focus on products - goals. In fact, our society is structured around the idea of goals. "making something of yourself" is touted as the utmost freedom afforded by American life. That statement, "making something of yourself," implies a timeline with a destination, which in turn implies that there is some goal, some future self that you should set out to 'achieve.' Achievement is overrated. I say live instead of achieve. No acquisition will replace this moment, and with an emphasis on those moments ahead, these moments pass away. As beautifully painful and exquisitely sinister as this moment might be, it is a work of art that is exactly as magnificent as each of you. You, after all, don't exist except right now, and you will never again exist as you do now. 7 years from now you will be completely different. Life is process... not product.