Changing

Yesterday I got the nicest email from Katie (don't worry! The head swelling properties wore off after a few minutes and the regular self loathing took precedent again):

"I can't believe how different you look! I was a bit stunned when I saw you the other night, which is why I was a little lost for words when we were standing there. You look amazing Christopher and you look about 5 years younger! You also look happier and more relaxed. This is all good stuff right?"

So the vast amounts of botox injections have paid off then?

Anyway, this got me to thinking, because when I was at home in Bath for Christmas and in Birmingham for New Year’s Eve three of my oldest friends each separately commented on how much I seem to have changed of late. My friend Tim said that it was how much more I seemed to be listening to him. Another friend said that there was a pervading sense of calm. She said that I used to be many good things, but calm was never part of the mix with me.

And for many of the reasons that I have cited here before I do believe that the last year has indeed bought about a number of subtle changes in me. But at the same time I still feel, ultimately, the same. Different and yet the same, if that makes sense. For the last few weeks I have been pondering the question, “do we ever really change?”

Sometimes I look at a friend, someone who I have known for a long, long time, and I think that I pretty much know who they are. It’s like I have them etched in my mind forever, that I totally have them figured out. Then later I see something different about them – it could be a subtle change in appearance, or that they proffer some opinion I wouldn’t have necessarily assigned to them. And suddenly I have this totally new picture. And it doesn’t match the picture that I had before.

My friends and I are infamous for changing our minds. In fact, we don’t always stop with our minds. We'll change our hair, our fashion, our facial expressions, our football teams - practically anything that can be changed, at some point, will be changed. None of us have actually changed genders yet, but I’m just biding my time, waiting for that interesting news flash. But at the end of the day, do people really change themselves?

Like a snake ... ok, not entirely like a snake (cause that would be kinda gross), apparently we shed all of our skin over a period of seven years. That means that the skin on my fingertips that I am typing with right now is not the same skin I was typing with at university ten years ago. Could there be a beautiful irony there? That apart from our eyes, our skin is the only part of us that people can physically see? In other words, don't get too attached to the “me” you see right now because it’s going to be gone in a few years time.

Which leads me on to this: I have always thought that the “soulmates” concept is pure evil. The implications of what it means to only have one perfect person available for us are truly chilling. But from experience I not only believe this, but I know that there are people who are so tuned into each other that they give immediate access to each others hearts. And even if one of them breaks the heart of the other and the broken heart itself has to mend, those two people could still meet up again several years later and still realise that nothing has changed. Because aren't we told that the heart is constant?

I think that our hearts and our skin are the exact antithesis of each other. Our hearts really are constant, beating through an entire lifetime without stopping once. But our skin is made new over and over. No one can deny that both our hearts and our bodies have a lot to do with whom we are. But I don’t think that it’s irrelevant that throughout history lovers and writers have focused on the heart. Because hearts go on, but like a photograph our appearance will fade.

So to answer my own question - do people ever really change? Yes, I suppose they can. But, at the same time, not that much.