My Story Worth question for this week.
Do you believe people can change?
Yes. Absolutely yes. This is one of the few things or which I am certain.
We cannot help but change. Much of the way we think we are is related more to the correlations between our past, present and future, but they are not the same. It is like the movie that shows separate images so close together that we perceive them being the same movement. I find this distressing and empowering.
The future need not be like the past. We are not be slaves of what we were. We are not prisoners of what happened in the past or even what we did in that past. We can decide to take a different course. That is why I believe so strongly in redemption. Redemption = change in the right direction.
I am less interested in what people were, or even what they are now than in what they will or can become.
The only thing consistent in all your failures is you
Our limits are often self-imposed and there is no self-limiting factor so strong as the belief, usually implicit, that people cannot change or that we specifically cannot change. This belief persists because it is comfortable. We explain our failures and flaws by blaming our circumstances, history, upbringing, lack of “privilege,” bad parents, bad friends, bad relationships bad location, bad genes or just bad luck.
These excuses evaporate if we acknowledge that we can change. Generally, life improves, but it gets harder. Knowing we can change implies responsibility. That is empowering but it is not comfortable. If we can choose to be better, it implies that our choice is to be worse if that is what we are. We can always imagine something better than we can achieve, but is it not better to be free and have our reach exceed our grasp than never to try at all?
Life is not fair. So what do you do?
Things happen to us that we did not plan, we did not foresee, that we do not deserve. Choices of what happens is not available to the mortal man. Our choice is our reaction.
Change happens; we choose what to make of it.
Others have said it better than I can, so I will quote here “Invictus.” Invictus is Latin for unconquered, with a connotation of unconquerable. It is a lovely word.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.