liv - he does this every time something upsets him, i swear. get some new material.

[darknessb4me]

[Filtered away from graduated inmates and from Tirion, Martha, and Sarah. Audio.]

We are defined by we do. Identity therefore is not an idea or a definition, but a series of acts taken. The future tends to come to abrupt and violent ends, so your life is measured by your past. What you have done is what you are.

[He smiles.]What you have done

Comments

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[grand_lotus]

None of us walk away from any of our experiences exactly as we were before we went through them. Whether we are better or worse for them is as much our own decision as that of the whims of chance.

To change is not to break.

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[darknessb4me]

To change is to let the world bend you.

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[grand_lotus]

To refuse to change means that the world leaves you behind. Do you truly believe that your entire existence has been spent in stagnation?

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[darknessb4me]

It's not stagnation. The world changes to fit me.

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[grand_lotus]

That relationship does not go one way. It never does. Even those without the power to deliberately change their world still influence the shape it takes, and the reverse is true.

You are not the man you were when you were a child, Arthas, nor the man you were ten years ago or even yesterday. The past is the only thing that does not change.

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[darknessb4me]

And I'm saying that people are their pasts.

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[grand_lotus]

They aren't. Other people's perception of you, certainly, is defined by your history. However, your identity is who you are in the moment - and perhaps, if only a little, what you intend to be in the future.

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[darknessb4me]

I don't have a future.

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[grand_lotus]

You've said as much in the past, yet here we are.

You refuse to let yourself believe that the future might be better than what you have left behind. But it still exists.

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[darknessb4me]

Here we are and nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes here. The people are ants.

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[grand_lotus]

The 'ants' are all that matter here. People have come and gone. Inmates have graduated and left, or chosen to stay. Closing your eyes to change does not stop it happening.

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[darknessb4me]

People come and go and don't make a single mark! No one even remembers them after enough time!

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[grand_lotus]

Because this is not home. To any of us. It is a place that we pass through.

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[darknessb4me]

Some of us are going to die here.

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[grand_lotus]

If you fully believe that to be true, I expect that it will be.