on the old rules

Do with change what you will

There may never be enough change. Enough bridges built between our ideals and our realities. Enough faces turning towards the same light.

The air between people has learned new tricks, little one. It carries voices across oceans but muffles the ones sitting three feet away. Touch has become theoretical; the hunger remains the same but the methods of feeding it have multiplied into forms that satisfy nothing while promising everything.

Look at them! The postal worker may still make his rounds, but the letters have changed, he will say. The runner may still get up in the morning, but his route has changed, he will admit.

There was a time when distance required effort to maintain. When silence meant absence rather than choice. When the decision to reach someone involved walking to their door, waiting for them to answer, accepting that they might not be there.

But there is no limit now. When the old rules die, it is not up to the old writers to write them. Nor is it the new writers. It is up to the Gods, for as Epictetus once said “God has only introduced Man to be a spectator of Himself and of His works.”