The Changing Skies: Nature's Beauty and Greatness - Philosophical Aphorisms on Change

Change is the only constant, yet sometimes it feels like absolutely nothing changes except change itself. Change in itself does not mean something good, change is devoid of any moral ambiguity.

Nature herself, if we can label her with the feminine pronoun, is simply change, movement, temporality, transformation. Only humans have the ability to briefly step outside of themselves, outside of this temporality to appreciate the beauty in change. Only humans can temporarily move beyond, transcend, change to see change; to not simply feel change but to be aware of it.

Being aware of change, transcending for a brief moment, necessarily means that one is aware of the past, present and future. No other animal or being is simultaneously aware of the past, present, and future. Being cognisant of these means one can transcend, even if only for a brief moment, them; that is, one can step outside of their influence to see them. One can look at the clock and see time proceed, one can then be aware of the past as the moment-that-was-just-now and the future as the moment-that-will-be-just-now.

Time and change, time and nature. Time encapsulates movement and nature. Nature is the change we see. The sky moves, the clouds move. We look up at the heavens and the stars move away further every second. The end is nothing because change will inevitably consume the end itself.

Our deepest fears are linked to change; our deepest fear is change. Security is the ultimate luxury with change being the biggest evil.

But the only way to grow is to accept change for what it is: the moving from one place to the next; the transformation of things; growth.

Growth equates to change. The unavoidability of movement in life should be embraced not feared. It is by holding onto the past, onto the security of rigidity, that we fear change and that change has such a grip on us.

It is painful to lose, to feel change itself. Pain and suffering is movement, it is temporary. It does not last because it is governed by the same rules of change as everything else; it goes by. Like the shadows on the ground of clouds, or the clouds themselves, it moves on, it changes. Pain and suffering will change, transform, move.

Now one can still ask: is movement, transformation, change itself not temporary waiting for change itself? Can change be changed, can movement itself move, transformation be transformed?

The stumbling block, aporia (Greek for puzzle/conundrum), cannot be solved. Like Aristotle's first mover, God, Being, Truth (with a capital T) life itself, soul, etc., we can only transcend temporality for a moment to appreciate the beauty of this contradiction. Who started change, was there non-change at a time, will change change into non-change someday? Marveling these questions is itself a form of beauty because at the end we need to step back into temporality, descent back to change, and function beside her strangeness.