I wrote this back in 2013 as part of my write-something-everyday project (It’s Novel).

7 years later it most certainly applies to my current thinking of the state of the world.

It changed everything and changed nothing. The mere existence, the actuality of it, the overwhelmingly realness meant that nothing could ever be the same. The reality shift had occurred and could never, ever be erased.

And yet nothing had changed. Planets orbited, children starved needlessly in wastelands while their neighbours nodded their heads. Young girls discovered love and old men counted their regrets like a miser counts his gold. The season slowly shifted, the morning was alive with sound and sun, and the birds started to get restless, eager to move on but not knowing why.

There were tasks to be performed and jobs to be done, just like yesterday; yet it was all so … different. And that difference was what it was all about. Or rather, the difference that the difference made. Everyone reacts differently to change and everyone is afraid of the unknown. Some revel in their fear and drink in the elixir from their adrenal glands, but many, even most, see it as a bizarre illness or an uncontrollable affliction that shreds their sanity simply by the fact of its existence.

Knowing things have irrevocable changed is often the reward for curiosity. And knowing it existed, changed it again.