During the summer I went to a lecture at SMU concerning the chemistry behind 17th-century art, which turned out to be way more interesting than I had originally predicted (I have no profound love for art from the 1600s and chemistry reminds me of my current battle with o-chem). Here is the gist of the lecture minus all the chemical explanations:

17th century artists would paint with really cool oil paints that were very vibrant and colorful and dazzling. Then their paintings would be hung up in cathedrals and homes. These places were hot--thanks to lack of A/C and candles. The heat caused the paints to slowly undergo chemical reactions which dulled the colors of the paint and turned the grass brown and the blue skies grey. Take a look at Simon de Vlieger's Wooded Landscape with Sleeping Peasants:

The blue sky has disappeared and the greens aren't so green anymore and the vibrancy it probably once had has left.

I'm not a 17th-century artist but I do think I've experienced the same fading effect. For the past two years, I had painted my life the way I wanted it to look like. I did what I wanted to do, I kissed who I wanted to kiss, I planned what I wanted to accomplish. And now looking back at everything I'm realizing that a lot of the colors I painted my life with (people, ideas, etc) have faded. The pigments have lost their shine. People who once looked at me like I was golden don't even look at me at all anymore. My ideas seem a little too unrealistic or a little too stupid. But there's absolutely nothing I can do to fix it! Paintings fade and so do phases of your life. And when this happens, what do you do then?

You start a new damn painting.
You get new ideas.
You kiss new people.

The hard part is when you get so invested in what you're painting that you never want to stop. I liked where my life was going. I loved the people in it, fiercely. This is when it's important to realize that the artist doesn't fade, just the colors do. You're guaranteed to change, but so are the people surrounding you.

This doesn't mean that everyone and everything in your life will eventually disappear. There are some pigments of color that never change, such as ultra-marine blue. Nothing (time included) dulls it, which is why it's pretty pricey. There are going to be people and things and beliefs in your life that never leave and these are your ultra-marine blue people and things and beliefs and so hold them dear to you and love them forever. Finding ultra-marine blue people in your life is extraordinary. But for everything and everyone else? There are no guarantees.

So in conclusion, keep painting, but don't get upset when the colors you're painting with start to fade. Don't lose your mind when people walk out of your life. Come up with new ideas when your old ones start to seem dull. I'm sure Simon de Vlieger isn't crying about his grey-ed skies and neither should you.