He looks around him and sees how the old ways turn to ash at his feet, only to be disturbed by the march of progress. Change is inevitable. Inexorable, even. He understands the world around him can't stay the same forever - these aren't the halcyon days of youth, when time was liquid and five years was considered "a very long time". Is now the time for a five year plan? What sort of people have those, anyway? he wonders. Those absorbed in their careers, their own lives? Not absorbed: obsessed. Obsession begets compulsion, begets addiction. Start the weekend with a drink, but every month the weekends start earlier until there is nothing but weekend. Time has become liquid again. "I deserve it after the week I've had" they say. "I deserve some fun, to have my own little vice." But it could be drugs, or a loose temper, or a weakness for women. Or a more benevolent desire to collect shoes/stamps/books or any number of things. It becomes accepted only because it becomes standard. You don't expect change so change never happens, but it's there, waiting. What if they wake up and decide to change? Is it you or them? "Don't do it for me" you say. He replies "Change isn't always conscious" so is conscious change a bad thing, or even change in the first place? Or is it simply an existing vice, or facet, or quirk, slotted somewhere else, pushed to the side? Not ignored, but consciously forgotten - which isn't forgotten at all, of course. Change isn't the enemy. Change is progress.
Isn't it?
