The Most Visible of the Abstract Truths
Casual Disquisitions #2
STOP SAYING PEOPLE CAN’T CHANGE
Yes, I started this casual disquisition by yelling at you. I won’t yell anymore, but I aim to be firm.
Change. The most visible of the abstract truths, a condition no person or thing can, or, has escaped. And yet, change is also a metamorphosis that people so often refuse to do. Or they refuse to believe that people can do it.
Change is inevitable. But it is also something that can be begun through effort. Changes can happen to anything and everything and we see it everywhere. In the faces of people we love, in the buildings we live and work in, the land that we farm and destroy and play on and die on. Even the stars change - they burst into a final, scorching, fiery maelstrom and their original form disappears from the universe, leaving change in their wake. The most visible of the abstract truths.
Change is both something that happens to you and something that you can do.
Time
Time is one of the great causes of change. Time is as inevitable, perhaps more so, than change. It can bring a deterioration, an entropy, to things, or, depending on the circumstances, growth and vitality. Your body changes over time. It grows, but it can also deteriorate. Health, genetics, and age, but also choices, all factor into the change. Time reveals them.
Events
An event can bring about change. A natural disaster, an accident, or a surprise. A traumatic situation, a new opportunity, or the results of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are all factors that can bring about change. Sometimes the change is sudden, like with an accident, and other times it comes slowly, like when saying ‘yes’ to something.
Effort
And here is where the ability to choose to change comes in. With effort: deciding to do something different, building the habit, then continuing the habit. Recognizing a change is needed requires effort, and then initiating that change require even more effort. But then time - always a factor - reveals the truth of whether real change was made. And the results - sometimes visible, sometimes not - reveal whether the change was negative or positive.
There is one vital difference between change that happens to you and change that you initiate: whether the change that happens to you changes you.
Your circumstances will always change, but does that require that you change along with them? Is it better that you do so? Will it change you for the worse if you do? Sometimes you do not have much choice in the matter, such as when trauma occurs, but other times you do. So then, what do you choose? Each situation is different.
Let’s forget change that happens to you for a second and talk about change that you initiate.
Personally, those that go around saying that ‘people can’t change’ are signaling that they are not willing to change. When you hold a belief in your head about someone else, it always reflects on your own self-perception. If they don’t believe others can change, they believe the same of themselves.
Here’s the issue: people can change. They just don’t want to.
Think about the deeper meaning of saying ‘you can’t’. It implies that there is no choice, not in actions or behavior or decisions. It implies that the responsibility for their actions or their decisions or behavior cannot fall on them, because they had no choice in the matter.
Or, alternatively, think of when people say “They should know better.” If they should know better, doesn’t that imply that they could know and do better? Now imagine if this same person said, “But I don’t believe people can change.”
What a contradiction!
If they can’t change, then there is no should. It doesn’t exist.
Everything changes (hah!) when the truth is revealed: people can change. Then, “They should know better” brings on a whole new meaning. Sometimes behavior is due to ignorance and knowledge can bring about a more positive change.
There are those who have the knowledge and refuse to use it. The reasons are endless and a lot of them sound like excuses.
Those who have lived with various forms of abuse know this to be true. Abuse in itself is a betrayal, but the feeling of betrayal is renewed once you realize the person knew what they were doing and did it anyway. That the outburst, the intimidation, the sly or overt comments designed to tear you down, were not symptoms of someone who did not know better, but were deliberate actions - a choice. A series of choices. For some victims, that series of choices lasted years and appeared daily.
What about you?
In talking about other people, let’s reflect on ourselves. There are things in all our of lives that could and in some cases should change. If there wasn’t, we would be perfect. Find me a person who never needs to change or bring about change and I’ll show you perfection.
You’ll never find them.
For someone who can freeze when faced with even the idea of change, realizing that there are - were, and probably will be - things about myself that I could change had me stalling out. I had the knowledge. I even had some vague idea of the process. But the act of change can be frightening even when fear is not necessary.
But in meditating on the concept of change, there is a sort of freedom in realizing that I could simply… choose. I could simply… begin.
And most likely fail. And then begin again, and perhaps fail again, and then finally get a habit forming, and then I get sick or something else happens and what drops: the new habit. But I could begin again. I could choose.
And time will reveal the results.
What could you change?
This isn’t about how to change. I’m pointing out that you can. I know that the way I go about changing things in my life could look worlds different than what it would like for someone else. Part of being able to change comes from knowing yourself.
How you think plays a large factor, and for some of us that means gaining outside help.
The body, in general, also plays a big role. Do you have your health? Are you battling a chronic illness? When are you most energetic? Do you understand your cycles?
Schedules. Some of us are booked solid. Some of us have others relying on our time and energy. Shoving in a change into a full schedule, while taking away time for rest can have the opposite effect we’re looking for.
This doesn’t mean you can’t change. It just means it has to look different. Or perhaps things must be shifted.
It’s why I look at “how-to’s” as suggestions or guidelines. No list or set of instructions is comprehensive enough to cover all the variables in my life that that author had no knowledge of. It doesn’t have to be exact, but it does have to work exactly for me.
People Can Change
For the better. For worse. Through effort. As a result of an outside force. Change happens to everyone, but how many people make change happen for themselves? The most visible of the abstract truths is also the most able to be harnessed and used for the better. So, people can change. I can change. You can change.
Agree that habit is the key. Like exercise, it's too hard to keep up the habit, and far too easy to break it. Injury, sickness, bad weather, depression, too hot out, too cold out, it might sprinkle -- but usually no real excuse to not get back into the habit.