The inevitability of change

After a recent conversation with hubby I began to wonder about the way that our lives change over the years.

Nothing ever stays the same, does it? Pets and people grow old (hopefully) and die (sometimes too young). Your health waxes and wanes – even if you just feel run down or pick up a cold in the winter. New technology means that we buy the new TV or camera that has made our old one obsolete and our cars get rusty and prone to breaking down. Actually, that last point isn’t strictly true with my car, it’s old but not too rusty and doesn’t break down – it does however make weird gurgling noises when it rains and the rain gets in thorough the sun roof and gets trapped in the ceiling....but I digress....

Hubby and I were talking about how your relationships change as your time together evolves. When you are young and in love you spend all your time together. For much of the time you are joined (quite literally) at the hip and even outside of that you spend every waking moment together or calling each other. Then life just seems to take over and for many people children happen. Their lives are suddenly transformed into providing a nappy changing, feeding and onwards to taxi service. The couple don’t spend so much time together, they spend it with the children...(we by-passed this and moved onto the next stage (having no kids!)). Then, the kids leave home and the couple want to do all those things that they didn’t have time for when the kids were occupying their time. Much of their time is spent with work and the social life attached to that, some of them join clubs and societies and have ‘a life of their own’ and as a couple they end up spending no more of their time together than they did when the kids were around. Maybe they even spend less as at least they did things as a family when the kids were small...

Time marches on (as it has a habit of doing), something else becomes obsolete and needs replacing and then the mortgage is paid off and it’s time to retire from work. Guess what happens....the couple end up spending every waking moment together again, just like they did in the first flush of love. Isn’t that amazing?

I suppose what I wondered the most about all of this, is that although those changes are bound to happen, sometimes we don’t like the way that time keeps moving on, forcing us to get ever older and making us continually adjust to stuff. But, it’s how we cope with that change that makes us who we are. Should we move forward kicking and screaming, should we be depressed at the passage of time or should we go forward always looking back with regret at what has passed? I don’t think we should do any of those – I think we should look to the future as an undiscovered country – yes it will always change and yes, I will get older, but life is just like that. Since purple is my favourite colour, I guess I won’t have any issues about wearing it when I get old either!