All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for

Host: The evening hung heavy with memory. The train station was almost empty, the last departures written in faint gold on the flickering departure board. A faint fog rolled in from the river, curling around the iron pillars and swallowing the sound of footsteps.

Jack stood on the platform, one hand resting on a worn suitcase, the other tucked deep into his coat pocket. His grey eyes traced the tracks that disappeared into the dark. Behind him, Jeeny appeared quietly, her figure half-lit by the dull glow of the station lamps.

Her face was calm, but her eyes carried that deep, bittersweet knowing — the look of someone who had learned that all departures, even chosen ones, are a kind of mourning.

Jeeny: “Anatole France said, ‘All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.’”

Host: The words drifted into the stillness, delicate and fatal all at once — like a truth too beautiful to be resisted and too painful to be denied.

Jack didn’t turn around. He just exhaled, slowly, his breath clouding in the cool air.

Jack: “Die to one life before entering another… You make it sound like we’re supposed to applaud our own endings.”

Jeeny: “Not applaud. Acknowledge.”

Jack: “Same thing when you’ve lost enough.”

Jeeny: “No. Acknowledging doesn’t mean approving. It means accepting that what’s gone isn’t coming back — and what’s next will ask something new of you.”

Host: The wind swept through the station, carrying the smell of iron, old rain, and something faintly nostalgic — as if the air itself remembered the people who had once stood here, trying to be brave.

Jack: “You ever think change gets too much credit? Everyone calls it growth, but it feels more like grief.”

Jeeny: “That’s because it is. Growth is grief — the loss of who you were before you knew better.”

Jack: “Then why do people long for it so badly? If every step forward costs another piece of you, what’s left at the end?”

Jeeny: “What’s left is truth. Not the pretty kind — the kind that hurts until it heals. The kind you can live with when everything else falls away.”

Jack: “So we’re supposed to keep shedding versions of ourselves until there’s nothing left?”

Jeeny: “No. Until what’s left finally fits.”

Host: A faint hum from the distant tracks filled the silence. A train approached slowly, its headlights cutting through the fog — an arrival, or a farewell, depending on the heart that watched it.

Jeeny stepped closer, her voice softening.

Jeeny: “Every change is a kind of death, Jack. That’s why it hurts. But it’s also why it matters. You can’t stay in one life forever — it decays if you do.”

Jack: “So you let it die, even when it still feels alive?”

Jeeny: “Especially then. That’s when it costs the most, and that’s when it counts.”

Host: The train slowed to a stop. Doors opened with a sigh of air, the sound almost human. Passengers disembarked, weary and faceless, like ghosts returning from other versions of the same world.

Jack watched them quietly.

Jack: “You know, I used to think change was something you earned — a reward for courage. Now it just feels like inevitability. Like time doesn’t ask permission anymore.”

Jeeny: “It never did. It only asks if you’re willing to come along.”

Jack: “And if you’re not?”

Jeeny: “Then it drags you anyway — and calls it fate.”

Host: A bell rang somewhere down the platform. The air shifted. A man waved goodbye through the window of a departing car. The moment seemed suspended between past and future — as if even time hesitated to leave.

Jeeny watched Jack’s face as the light from the train flickered across it.

Jeeny: “You’re afraid to leave, aren’t you?”

Jack: “No. I’m afraid of arriving.”

Jeeny: “Because it means this life is over?”

Jack: “Because it means I won’t recognize myself when the next one begins.”

Host: The fog thickened, cloaking the platform in pale silence. Only the dull rhythm of the train engine broke the stillness — steady, inevitable, like change itself.

Jeeny: “You will. You’ll just recognize yourself differently. That’s the secret. We don’t stop being who we were — we just carry it, like old photographs in a pocket.”

Jack: “And if those photographs fade?”

Jeeny: “Then you let them. Maybe that’s mercy.”

Host: The lamplight caught her profile — serene, almost sorrowful. She wasn’t trying to convince him. She was remembering.

Jack’s voice dropped low.

Jack: “Do you ever miss the people you used to be?”

Jeeny: “Every day. But I’d rather miss them than still be them.”

Jack: “That’s cold.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s honest.”

Host: The train doors hissed again, the conductor’s voice calling softly to no one in particular. The air was filled with motion — the kind that felt both urgent and eternal.

Jack’s hand tightened on the suitcase handle.

Jeeny stepped closer, her tone quiet but certain.

Jeeny: “You don’t have to like change, Jack. You just have to stop fighting its gravity. Every time you cling to what’s dying, you delay what’s waiting to be born.”

Jack: “You make it sound like resurrection.”

Jeeny: “It is. But resurrection always requires a crucifixion first — a self you have to leave behind.”

Host: The train whistle blew — long, echoing, final. The sound filled the station, wrapping around them both like the voice of something older than regret.

Jack turned, his face lit by the approaching light.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe change isn’t about becoming new. Maybe it’s about letting old selves die with dignity.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Every goodbye is just a gentler word for transformation.”

Host: The doors closed. The train began to move, pulling away into the darkness, its windows glowing like brief, passing lives.

Jack stood still, watching it disappear, then let out a slow breath. His hand released the suitcase handle.

Jeeny: “You’re staying?”

Jack: “No. Just catching my breath before I go.”

Jeeny smiled faintly, eyes soft with the kind of empathy that doesn’t fix, only understands.

Jeeny: “Then you’ve already started.”

Host: The camera pulled back — the vast, empty platform now just two figures in the fog, one facing the future, one walking toward it. The echo of the departing train grew faint, like memory fading into time.

Overhead, the lights flickered once, twice — and steadied.

The fog began to thin.

The day, patient and inevitable, was waiting to begin.

Because as Anatole France wrote — and as Jack was beginning, painfully, beautifully, to understand —
all change, even the kind we pray for, carries its own mourning.
We leave behind the ghosts that built us,
we bury one life so that another can rise,
and we call the ache that follows by its truest name:
becoming.