Transforming

          

           I have spent the last couple weeks at my parents’ house.  My mom and dad have the “home improvement bug” and have decided to turn what used to be known as the Blue Room into a Man Cave of sorts.  The Blue Room was known as such for obvious reasons: it was blue.  It was a hangout of mine in high school and a playroom when I was younger still.  When I would have friends over we would sit in there and watch movies, play games, or just hang out and chat for hours.  It was the home to all of my high school sleepovers, but it hasn’t seen much use it the last six years.  So it’s natural to transform it into something more useful for the times. 

            And it got me thinking, this room transformation, about how easy it can sometimes be to transform something old into something new.  How sometimes a new floor, a few coats of paint, and some extremely comfortable furniture can take a room once dedicated to the entertainment of teenagers with it’s royal blue walls and Polaroids plastered on the walls and magically turn it into a much more classy football lair.  And isn’t that the same for people sometimes? When life becomes dull or tragic or up in the air, sometimes we like to make changes.  A new haircut, a new wardrobe, a new workout regime…we like to change something within our control in order to make all the other changes taking place around us more normal, less unpredictable.  No longer are we the “old” version of ourselves.  We have become “new and improved”.  But the thing about all of that is that it’s really only the exterior that has changed.  Your hair is now short instead of long. Your clothes are now more fashionable. You now eat more vegetables.  But on the inside you’re still the same person.  You’ve only changed how people see you. 

            And it’s really the same for the old Blue Room.  It might be brown now.  It might have wood floors.  But when I walk through those doors the memories will still be the same.  I will still hear the laughter from long ago.  I will still remember the people who kept me company there.  I will still remember the games played or the toys from my childhood that kept a home there.  Even though the outside has changed, the inside will always be the same.