A change had occurred

A change had occurred, something new had intervened. He could no longer evolve the great feeling of solitude, where he had felt as though alone before nature and humanity, for somebody stood at his side or behind him. The isolation was abolished, and he was soldered to the little banal life, threads had been spun round his soul, considerations began to bind his thoughts, and the cowardly fear of harboring other thoughts than those his friends harbored clutched him.

August Strindberg – On the Seaboard (1913)

As I write this blog post and publish it online, the act of writing and publishing it changes me slightly. Not much and not in any quantitative sense, but there is a change because I made choices I’ve never made before about words and ideas I’ve never before thought or written in exactly this way. At least I hope that’s the case. I’ve made similar choices in the past, but not exactly the same choices.

If you choose to read the post then you will be changed too. If you choose to leave a comment that’s another change which reflects back on readers who read your comment.

Yet it isn’t easy to accept that we constantly change in ways which are never repeated. An aspect of this is that people vary in their attitude to the essential dynamism of life. Some wish it wasn’t so and look to various authorities willing to delude that it isn’t so. Hence the main political division between political and apolitical. Left and right are part of the illusion.

We see it all the time throughout the coronavirus debacle, the illusion that we can prevent change. Yet ironically these attempts have almost certainly created greater and more damaging changes than if we had been more pragmatic.