the air is twinged with the scent of change.

I can choose to be dust,

I can choose to be oak.

Right now, I soften my heels, so oft dug into the dirt. 

I yield. 

These winds of possibility pick me up, and this flying— it is equal part trust, equal part gliding. 

Where do you take me, O spirit of the sky? You, the winds of change— me, dust in a palm. Fingers unfurl, and I am scattered out, out, out, into the world.

But these winds of change carry me on a circular globe. I’ve been thrown so far that I revisit the same places I once lived. I watch my younger self, a phantom— but time is a void that snuffs my voice, it is the vacuum of space that carries no sound. To my younger self, my warnings can only be mouthed, but his eyes are fixed so firmly there, upon the ground.

Little did I know, this communication goes one way. For his way of living, his way of being: it is warning enough. The message, it is for me, not him. I look back, he looks down; he screams the warning, yet he makes no sound. I see his footprints before me, there on the ground— I dance around, round, round. I traverse the same territory, but older. Wiser. I am him, he’s yet to be me— but oh, I will make him proud.

~

…and what do I have but a promise? What do I have but a promise to me, and me alone, that I will do better, be better? Why else should a man live but to outdo himself? A life without growth is a life without hope. 

Give yourself a future to look forward to: the promise of betterment. 

And when the winds of change come to take you there, yield — let them carry you. Let yourself be dust, scattered by the winds of change.