The Changing You

The people from your past think they know you.
Let them be.
Who among us has not changed beyond recognition since somebody somewhere knew us?
Do they know the impact of the books you have read since their departure? The poetry that previously left you unaffected, and now move you to tears? Have they any idea of the new connections you have built, the new insights you gleaned? Can they fathom the fresh pain you plumbed? The new cultures you have exposed yourself to? The everyday experiences that reshaped you through unrecognisable moulds?
The trillions of body cells that have altered you completely... were they slaves of mere biology? What about the effect of new ideology, new ideas, new emotions, rediscovered humaneness?
You are the fast-moving clay on the potter's wheel. You change every instant within every instant. You live and breathe through all those changes, eternally yourself. Yet, when you catch a glimpse of your past, you wonder about that stranger in the album. What unseen forces changed you? Was it the churn of the potter? And who is that potter? Time, destiny, or your own hand, taking it into itself, leading you into that gateway of the unknown?