The untameable chain

The other day I caught myself silently protesting within the safeness of my mind the unfairness of the way the world works. In many countries, getting into this or that university depends on sitting that one exam. Getting that job depends on that single interview. So much of our lives relies on these moments, on having a good day, waking up in a good mood, being calm, being... what you are expected to be. How many times have I not thought to myself after a miniature disaster: "If only it had been on another day, one that I hadn't a headache, then..." "If only I had had another day to study, then..." ... then I would have been ready to take on life. 

The problem is, life isn't like that.

She's independent.

She's wild.

She can't be tamed.

And even if it were another day, we would have no more control over that hypothetical day than the one when things actually did happen. In the end, we would be at the mercy of circumstances and situations, be them ideal or not. Romantic or absolutely tragic. Architected in perfection or dodgily unstable.

The thing about this wildness of life, is that we attribute importance to these big, 'decisive' events we have in life (the ones that make us fuss and be nervous, anxious, and goodness knows what else goes on in our little preoccupied brains that try to carry a world too heavy for them), but the thing is... I don't think we should be giving them so much importance. No, no, I'm not saying they are unimportant, not at all. They do change our lives very much. However, they should not be given so much importance because there are other important things as well. 

- An unexpected epiphany -

Not a moment goes by in which you are not, somehow, changed forever. 

Every day. Even the boring days. The dull days.

Spent at home, watching a movie. Or maybe going out with your friends. Nothing is the same, because everything you see, smell and touch; everything you watch or listen to; every conversation you have with a random stranger or a close friend. Every experience parts from you biding farewell to someone different from the person who arrived in the first place. 

That happens because life is a chain of events, and like every chain, every part of it is necessary for the next one to attach to - but the next one is just that bit further forward so as to you never really are where you were before. You are never really who you were before.
Even if we think biologically, cells are dying and being born every moment in you. Things are changing in the universe - energy is being dispersed, spread out. Entropy is increasing. We can never, ever make the universe be exactly as it was before - yet we cling to our illusions that things are somehow the same. They are not. They were not. They cannot be the same. And therefore, if we are to live in this universe and be able to live and adapt, we cannot be the same. We learn, we change. 

Think of something, your favourite band, favourite food, or something that you are terribly afraid of, think of the first time you thought of something that would then become your biggest dream, or think of the person you love most in the world. Do you remember the first time you came into contact with any of these? When you started to like, to fear? When a thought gloriously went through a metamorphosis from a quiet thought to a dream? When you met the person you love most? Sometimes we do, others we don't - but the thing is, it did happen, one impossibly dull and utterly ordinary day; a day you maybe expected nothing from. Some anonymous day that faded into the routine, and you never realised the importance it had, until it already had become important, until that very plain day changed you, your taste, dreams, fears and love forever. Until that day grew into you in fondness or in memory or in fear, and became a part of you - that makes it impossible to think of what it would be like to pull that single link, that single thread of a day that has been woven into your soul so intricately, you can barely see it anymore. 

So, rather than obsessing over these days that seem stamped with importance in title or in content, what if we saw them as another link in the chain that makes up our lives? What if - better still - we got up every morning gloriously remembering how you are not the same person that lay down the night before? Looking in hope rather than fear at all the chances to change, to morph into something more glorious, more beautiful... and so these chains of concerns and worries, hanging from our wrists and binding our feet keeping us from running freely through our days may some day blossom into a beautiful chain of flowers - filled with life, unexpectedness and unique beauty - a beauty that can never be tamed or possessed, the same way a flower cannot live once it has been picked to be owned, but a beauty to be admired in its passing, in its coming and going, in every and any season life presents to us. 

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, or thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." 

- Charles Dickens, High hopes