Living Transformer

Ever since your first cry, you have been transforming everything that came your way.

You are a living transformer.

First – the body. Things go in and come out. Food becomes energy, then excrement. The lungs are pistons. Air comes in, feeds the blood, air goes out. Everything entering your body is transformed by the transformer that you are. You are a twenty-four-hour working body-factory. Feel the heart pumping. See your chest moving. A thousand transformations per second completed.

Second – senses. Light enters your eyes: trees, mountains, roads, buildings, people. People moving about, doing things. You observe them. Something within you changes. Something becomes transformed. Sound enters your ears: singing birds, rustling wind, running water, expansive sunset – an outside world is born within. An infant crying, neighbors fighting, painful knot in the stomach – an inner self-conscious world is born within. Transformation completed.

Third – mind. Ideas come in from somewhere. Mind starts weaving: writer-weaver. Ideas give birth to new ideas. First child, first family of ideas, then another. Hey, I too am a father! Of many families! Transforming ideas into families. Transformation completed.

Fourth – body, senses, mind synchronized. The composer feels an inner stir. The touch of the wind on his face, the image of his nephew and of ruthless Fate in his mind, the yellowhammer bird’s chirp –“ta-ta-ta-taaa” – calling from the treetops. Beethoven’s Fifth is born! And violin bows move in unison, and trumpets scream, and cellos cry, and the orchestra rejoices, and the conductor sweats, and the universe is never the same again. Transformation completed.

Fifth – spirit. You touch her. Fingers, palms, soft touch. Tenderness oozing through her skin’s pores. She touches your hand, head turns around, lips form a smile. Muscles, skin, meat becomes touch. Air sucked in – kiss. Suddenly, the lips, the breath, the eyes, the black curly hair, all vanish. No facial cells, no touch, no breath. There is no matter, no molecules. There are no bodies, no movements, no senses, no thoughts – not even emotions. No space and time. All has become Love. The whole universe has become Love. Transformation completed.

Like a tireless ant you start modifying everything that touches your being into new forms that appear for the first time in the cosmos. And you are not nothingness any more. Your transforming activity changes the universe!

You appeared one day on this Earth. You don’t know how, or why. You have a small body, a little speck located in this infinite space and time. And a puny mind trying to figure out its whence and whither. You move about on this giant globe and you seem like an absolute nothingness. But instinctively you begin transforming everything with which you come in contact. You soon discover you have little control over what goes into your transformer. But, what a miracle, you can control what comes out! Like a tireless ant you start modifying everything that touches your being into new forms that appear for the first time in the cosmos. And you are not nothingness any more. Your transforming activity changes the universe!

Ever since your first cry, you have been transforming everything that came your way. You have been grabbing every molecule of matter with your whole being and altering it – the wind, the sun, the sights, the sounds, the smells, but also the feelings and ideas that come to you from wherever. You are a moving, pulsating, living transformer-machine. The most perfect, the most efficient, the most advanced machine in the known universe.

And you cannot stop transforming! For you are being moved by an inexhaustible power source: the human Will. This mysterious power that amazes you: You wish that your hand moves, and suddenly, like magic, it moves! You conceive of a building, draw it on paper, and in a year it pops out of the earth. You have the urge to create a new human being and in a few months you form a new transformer out of your selfsame material. Every single moment of your life pertains to this constant and unabated transformative action. You are a ceaseless transformer powered by the inexhaustible power of the Will.

But while you transform, you are also being transformed.

But while you transform, you are also being transformed. Everything you do, everything you feel or think, everything that goes through you and comes out transformed on the other side, alters you. You are as much a self-transformer as you are a transformer.

Photo by Dean Moriarty

What did you transform today? How did you transform it? What did you make out of all of these impressions, sensations, thoughts, ideas that entered you? What came out of your body, out of your mouth? What did your hands do today, whom did they touch, embrace, greet? What did they write? Which clay did they mold? What type of bread did they knead? Where did your legs take you? What did your eyes and ears take in, what did your mouth give out? And most importantly, how did all these transformations that you completed today transform you?

Sensations, impressions, emotions, ideas … coming in, going out.

Ceaseless transforming.

Within you. By you. Because of you.

You are a living transformer.

This is your job.

Here, on Earth.

Nicos Hadjicostis

Nicos Hadjicostis is a writer, world-traveler, and former media executive. His award-winning book, Destination Earth – A New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler, is the result of a six-and-a-half-year around-the-world journey during which he treated the world as if it were one huge country, a single destination. To read more, and subscribe to his bi-weekly Tuesday Letters, visit his website.

See more content by Nicos Hadjicostis →