About The Inevitable: Change

Post 299:

            If one were to spend their entire life watching TV, reading history, or watching internet posts, they might be inclined to think that nobody is doing much mind-changing.

            Intransigence, a weird sort of slavish infrangibility—seems to be the order of the day. It’s rather ridiculous, if one was only to look at their own life. Who in their 40s believes what they believed when they were 20? Take any two decades of life and perform the same thought experiment. Very few bow at the same shrines they once did, and for good reason: better arguments are ingested, life lessons crash into the so-called entrenched dogmas that prove themselves something like Quixotic armor.

            Nobody stays the same. Physically, you’re a different person every second of your life. That is, the blood and cells that march and ebb and flow through you are never in the same place from second to second. Brain synapses are firing in similar but not exact patterns—face it, if the goal is intractability, goodnight Charlie.

            Not all change is good, but as the years pass, I’m convinced more all the time that openness to different voices and thoughts is healthy and necessary.

            Subtlety is key. Subtlety is key in most situations, actually. It might seem paradoxical, as change is the subject, but I don’t think so. One can’t be tossed from ocean to ocean, thinking wholly different philosophies. These things take time; board a ship, take the time to scan the sea and breathe the brine as the journey sets forth. Have a little faith in the ship, a little in the voyage, a little in yourself.

            But not too much. Again. Subtlety. Too much faith in oneself causes a sort of mental indolence. You’ll never change. Too much faith in the voyage will cause a tentativeness in your feet; setting foot on solid ground will become too daunting. Too much faith in the ship is silly. It’s just a means, not an end. Adrift can be a relaxing state, but in the end it’s not a livable code—it’s more surrender than serenity.

            It doesn’t bother me in the slightest to bring it home to the power of story. All the best characters are based around the way they adapt and change to the circumstances that are imposed on their persons and minds. Be of good character, and more than anything, be a character.

            Cheers. See you after.