It is the great paradox of being human: we change but we stay the same

‘Writers need to alternate between the business of living – having new experiences, being dynamic, surprising themselves, stepping into the unfamiliar rooms and once closed-off places – and the eternal and fixed.’ Photograph: JulPo/Getty Images

Sometimes it feels as though nothing really ends, that we carry things and people around with us over a lifetime. Tim Winton put it well when he wrote in The Turning, “The past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.”

Things are never over. This is what I was thinking about at my book launch two weeks ago, trying not to be overwhelmed as I looked around the room dense with association, love and history. Many there had been in my life since I was born – their faces hovering over the cot. My parents have the capacity for long friendship. Now in their mid-70s, some of their friends had been around since they were in primary school. Go back further and their parents – my grandparents – were also friends. Things are never over.