It's a pretty simple concept: things go from one state of being to another. It can be easily observed in almost anything, but the changes that have the biggest effect on us is probably the changes in people- especially the ones in ourselves. Changes in ourselves can affect how we treat the world and others, which in turn can affect how we are treated.
I've noticed that, for myself at least, these types of changes within myself often seem to sneak up on me. Whether it's in one of my food preferences, or my opinions on people, or even one of my viewpoints on the world, I find myself wondering how these changes happened so radically without my knowledge. I guess another thing I was amazed at was how I seemed helpless against these changes. After a long enough time, these changes occurred to even the strongest (feeling-wise) of my viewpoints.
This topic became a frequent subject of my thoughts in high school. From these thoughts, questions arose, like: "If I dont have control over these changes, how will I know where and how I end up?". The answer to that seemed to be that there was no way to know, and then I realized the implications.
When we talk about our greatest fears, we usually come up other people or objects or situations that threaten our body or our emotions: spiders, clowns, murderers, rapists, public speaking, embarrassment, heights. The list is endless. These are things outside ourselves. I have heard of fears that people have about themselves, but they seem more concerned about their own status, such as becoming homeless, or dying alone, or remaining a virgin for the rest of their life.
I think my greatest fear goes a little beyond that. My fear doesn't involve my future status, but my future nature. Not where I end up, but how. When I was back in high school, I conceived this:
My greatest fear is becoming someone who I would hate.
So who would I hate? A rapist that justifies rape to himself. A murderer who justifies murder to himself. A person who becomes so disconnected to the feelings of others that they are completely lacking empathy anywhere in their thought process.
The real scary part is, if I reach a point where my thoughts change so radically that I justify something horrible, this fear would have meant nothing. I would have already justified the murder to myself. It would be like: "I know I had something before against this, but whatever". So I guess, the essence of this fear comes from this sense of powerlessness against it.
Anyway, that's as far deep as I want to go about this.
