You are on an expedition to found a colony on Mars, when from a nearby crater, a group of Martians suddenly emerges. They seem eager to communicate, but they’re the impatient kind and demand you represent the human race in one song, image, memory, proof, or other idea. What do you share with them to show that humanity is worth their time?
When I accepted the mission, I was not expecting this. The seconds to find something to represent humanity, I mean, not the aliens. Disappointing wouldn’t even begin to describe going on a mission hoping for aliens and not finding any aliens. But that’s not the point. It’s no easy task, trying to condense the lives of 7.8 billion people into one common thing. 7.8 billion? I could have sworn that we just hit 7. I glance at my watch, pulling up a hologram of search results to double check, and my eyes widen in shock when I see that, as of November 15th, we’re set to be at 8 billion. I frown at the feeling, the feeling of change. It’s not that I hate the fact that something used to be one way and is now another, but rather how I feel like I never got to notice everything shifting all around me. Personally, I like to imagine that I’m on a road trip, and it’s reached that stage when the talking and laughter has subsided and everyone is either driving, sleeping, or doing something in an effort to sleep. Say that you are the latter, and you’re watching an episode of your favourite TV show (might I recommend Community?) and you turn your head to look outside the windows for a bit, maybe at the endless rows of corn or a billboard that caught your eye, and you glance back to see the complete dumpster fire (and there is literally fire everywhere) that is the Darkest Timeline of season three’s “Remedial Chaos Theory”, leaving you utterly flabbergasted at how you managed to get here. That’s what change is to me, the immediate unnoticed shift in my surroundings. And I hate not knowing how everything changes around me, and even more so, not being able to stop it.
Sometimes, there are times when I wish I was seven years old again, for one very specific reason: time was like honey, thick and viscous, flowing like maple syrup, and filled with warm, amber-tinted memories. The summer I turned seven, to this day, remains the basis for which I set my body’s internal length for summer vacation, because I remember just how long and drawn out it felt, truly as if it would never end. Now, summer, and every minute of my life, really, is fleeting, and I’m afraid to stop and just enjoy the moment, because by the time I pause and admire it, it is already gone. Although shocking, it’s not inexplicable. Back then, one summer was roughly two and half months, but we can round it to three for the sake of simplicity. At that age, three months out of the 84 that I had lived was roughly 3.5 percent of my life, which isn’t an awful lot until you consider the same data values for the present. Now, at age 17, the three months of summer vacation better round out to 2, which is just barely 0.98 percent of my life. Most of the time (these days, at least), time is more like a speeding bullet. It zips straight past, barely even giving you the chance to look at it before it’s moved on to the next second, the next minute, the next day, the next year, whenever. You stop to stare as it passes you by, and you’ve already lost time in the “now”.
Another terrible side effect of getting lost in memories is getting lost in the people we used to be and the people we used to be around. You spend days fondly reminiscing over the giant rager you and your friends threw in your final year of college, or the first few weeks of a relationship, or maybe even earlier, to back when you were ten years old and the only thing that mattered on a Friday night was eating as much ice cream and staying up as late as you and your best friend possibly could. I lost touch with the people I used to call my best friends four years ago, completely natural. There was no bad blood, no broken fences left unmended, no sudden moving away, nothing besides the fact that our bond more or less ceased to exist. That’s exactly what made it so painful, though. I knew the only thing that left me like this, pining for our friendship, was that we simply forgot, we simply stopped caring. So instead I surround myself with memories of us before this divide went up, making that a temporary reality and for brief moments, I am happy. I am content. And everything is right with the world until I scroll around on social media (I’ll have to explain that to the aliens after this, though it hopefully won’t change their minds) and I see pictures of them now, arms wrapped around another girl I am unfamiliar with in an embrace that I am familiar with. And due to this volatile cocktail of shock at this “new” revelation and a feeling that can only be described as “I-never-forgot”, I combust.
I do not particularly enjoy change, big or small, and I never met someone (or something, for that matter) that shared my sentiment to quite the same extent. Until I listened to it. “Night Changes” by One Direction. I had known of the song for years. I had heard it too. But I had never actually listened to it, really listened in an effort to connect with it. And as stupid as it sounds, the night I first listened to it, alone in my room at an ungodly hour at which I should have been asleep (of course, I will further elaborate to the aliens why humans love listening to music that puts us “in the feels” at this time), I sobbed. To an audience, it would have looked more unnerving rather than poetic or cathartic, considering that a tiny girl huddled in blankets, shoulders shaking violently and struggling to quiet heaving sobs that occasionally manifested as an unchecked squeak is not particularly as emotional as the movies like to make it seem. But to hear the lyrics reassure “me” (it’s never clarified who the singers are talking to, so to emphasize the emotional gravity of things, I will tell the aliens that I believe they are conversing with me) that “even when the night changes, it will never change me and you”, I wanted so badly to believe it. To let this soothing feeling wash over me, like a wave that has roared and splashed and crested and now tickles your feet in the sand before quietly slipping back to the sea. Like a warm bowl of tomato soup (and of course, I will brief the aliens about the healing properties of a good grilled cheese and tomato soup) as it travels down your throat and into your stomach, heat blooming within you. Like snuggling into blankets on a cold winter night with fluffy socks and a cozy sweatshirt with your dog’s nose nestled in the crook of your neck, his steady breathing calming yours down as well. But most of all, like waking up early in the morning, though you could never really sleep at all, and driving to the airport, waiting, waiting, waiting until you see their face and even though you are sleepy and they are jetlagged, you bolt towards each other, and collide in the warmest, safest, most comforting and all-encompassing embrace. It felt like coming home.
However, I still do not particularly enjoy change, and that’s okay. Because while I don’t love it, I have learned to accept it. I have learned to accommodate it. So many people believe that for change to be positive, you have to start enjoying it, but the truth is that all you need to learn is how to welcome it with open arms (and if you are like me, with some discomfort as well), because like it or not, it will happen, and it will be life altering in some way, shape, or form. I had to come to the understanding that as daunting as it seems, I must face it because quite frankly, what else is there to do? And so, I give the aliens this song to show that although humanity (as gathered from my anecdotes) may be a dumpster fire of epic proportions, it is also filled with little things, little melodies that, upon being listened to at 2 AM, can make a very stubborn girl not so stubborn at all. It can change her to allow change.