Palm tree

I used to think when I was younger that every build up leads to an explosion. That there would be this grand moment in someone's life that would change everything. But as I grew, I realized that this is not the case. That change has a silent route, that the biggest changes comes in the dark, in the alteration of the mundane. In a series of broken little details that you end up realizing far too late.

When it's too damaged to be fixed.

you end up changing without an explosion, without a witness. without you in the process.

And suddenly you're someone else. Someone you can recognize in the mirror but never in the dark, never in thought or theory.

And catching up with such change always comes shocking,  like a soft slap to the face that never hurts, but always alert.

You wonder, how such alteration could occur without notice? Without the promised big bang that will set every little detail to its right track.

And you may never find the answer, but it's simply maturing,  letting go of past hopes, and accepting loss and enjoying life as it is. Finally realizing that moving on means putting down the weight that you held on your shoulders for far too long.

we used to have a palm tree.  Big, tall, taller than the house and older than me. I used to climb to the rooftop to see the top of it, and I never could. until it started leaning, little, by little. like a curved spine greeting old age with a long  bow. and all I could do is wait for the drop, when the roots are too weak to escape the inevitable fall. until one day, I came back from school and it was just gone. when I asked my father about it, he told me that they had to cut it down to 7 pieces and put gasoline in its core  so it would wither away instead of falling down on the house.

No explosion, no fuss. it just died. That's when it hit me, sometimes we die before our grand moments, sometimes we just grow, and let go, and accept the little broken things.

Because if we didn't,  if we kept leaning waiting for our big bang, we might end up burned out through the process.