As it is: In an instant

Most things take time. But some things just happen in an instant. You keep fighting against something for months or maybe even years, and then just one fine day you wake up and realize that you are not the same person anymore. It feels like a rigid line has been drawn at that point which separates the life after that instant and before that instant.

And mind you, it doesn't always happen for good. There is a certain feeling about things and everything around you. It is like your unspoken relationship with the world which makes you feel a certain way about everything. You can only feel it and not describe it. And in fact, you can't even remember how it felt after this feeling has changed. The world felt different when you were a teenager. You can't remember how it felt unless you get hit by a familiar scent and your whole being gives up on current sensory experience and transports you to 2010 when you were making paper airplanes and throwing them off the tallest point in your school. 1... 2... 3... and that feeling is gone again. You can try to remember and you will, but no matter what you remember you won't be able to feel what you felt again. You have no other option but to travel back to the present.

And on the bright side, some instants change you forever for good. So good that you look back and wonder why you were even affected by some trivial petty thing. I wouldn't call it an epiphany, for epiphanies are profound. It feels more like the focus on your camera lens has been adjusted and suddenly everything looks different (not necessarily clearer). But just the awareness of the whole world changing with a change in our internal alignment makes us wonder how rich this life is and shows us the various ways to live a life without ever changing a thing outside ourselves.

Most changes are continuous. Hard work pays off incrementally, laziness eats you from inside inch by inch every single day. But these instants cause a discrete change in us. But maybe the change was happening deep down. Maybe how the world feels right now, your subconscious is building a case against it, and one fine day will call a coup against your status quo (for better or for worse). And once this change happens you will not be able to look at even simple things such as an eraser in the same way again. It is like your system has installed a new theme and everything looks and feels different.

It is hard enough to notice it, but I wonder if these states can be altered at will. If we can develop an ability to step out of this process instead of being a slave to it, take a more active role in order to have a richer life. What if we could make nostalgia stay, what if we could get rid of the thick sludge that engulfs us from time to time without passively waiting for it to go away. It seems like an impossible ability to experience, let alone master. But maybe this too will happen someday and I will get a conscious harmony over my subconscious experience. And maybe that too will happen... in an instant.

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I will be exercising my free will now and post a picture of moments before Barack Obama captured Osama-bin-laden.