Food for thought... can people change?
Someone said to me the other day that people do not change. That we are doomed or blessed to remain as we are throughout the duration of our lives, and that we as humans are only capable of changing externally. As the conversation went on, he also stated that a person is capable of knowing one’sself, and since we lack the ability to change, all we can do is learn to accept ourselves.
It was something that I could not stop thinking about, as my mind battled over the actuality of such statements. Just as it can be painful and uncomfortable to squeeze a size 8 foot into a size 7 shoe, maybe we cannot choose who and what we are, but to say that someone is incapable of change, goes against many ideas about humanity and personal development that I have always held; particularly in regards to emotional intelligence and psyche. To say that we know ourselves at any giving time seems unrealistic, as the way we view everything in life is ever changing.
I think about the way I have viewed myself over the span of my short 27 years, and at many different stages, what I thought I knew of myself has been quite opposing. For instance, at age 17 I thought I was unintelligent, and that my life would purely entail getting married to my tradie boyfriend and having little beach babies, which was fine because I had no personal goals. At age 19 I viewed myself as invincible, that I was confident, strong, courageous and ambitious beyond my years… I even got a tattoo to represent that image! At 23, I fell into deep depression to the point where I tried on numerous occasions to take my own life. I viewed myself as a disappointment, a misfit, like I was nothing but a waste of space, that I would never amount to anything other than to live in the shadow of all those smart enough, brave enough, talented enough, and normal enough to become great. Now here I am, and I have no idea who I am. All I know is what I don’t want to be.
I say all of this because I believe that what we think we know is always based on perception. Unless something is factual - like observing that a lemon is yellow, how can we ever be certain when we are always influenced by our state of mind? I do agree that we can identify personality traits within ourselves, but to say I know myself, or that I know anyone for that matter, is an impossibility. There are so many things that we may not have had the opportunity to learn about ourselves, such as how we would react to certain situations, good or bad, which we haven’t yet encountered. We would also not be human if we did not evolve and learn and adapt to our social, cultural and physical environments. So if we are an entity that is ever adapting, ever evolving, ever absorbing information, ever learning; how can we really know who we are?
In my opinion, pigeon holing and typecasting “what we are” based on our biased negative or positive opinions, is only serving to limit us. It makes us feel as though we are not capable of developing or changing, which presents a rather hopeless existence. I personally feel as though I change with every experience, and with every new thing that enters my mind. I have come leaps and bounds from where I was a few years ago, or a few years before that, and I know that will continue to happen throughout the duration of my life. The difference is making the choice to change and having the desire for more or other. If you feel as though there is something about yourself that you don’t like, find a solution to either change wholly or change it enough to make it better, rather than remaining stagnant. We should all try our best to learn from our mistakes and our losses, cause if we don’t we would make the same mistakes over and over. Similarly, it’s important for us to recognise the value in the things that we accomplish and that bring us happiness. As we go through life making these realisations about the world and aspects of our personality, how can we prevent ourselves from changing?
Maybe we need to just remind ourselves that nothing in life will ever be certain, and that’s okay. Change is also something that will always be simply inevitable. You can choose to fight it, or you can embrace it and let it happen around you… unfortunately, if you choose the former though, it will still happen, whether you like it or not.