(no subject)
It's funny how things work. How time progresses and things change: our perceptions, our feelings, ourselves. Truly, this is what surrounds our lives, the only constant that stays with us--change. There's an irony in that, but it's comforting nonetheless.
Sophomore year, when we read A Separate Peace, we learned about the book's themes of "choice and consequence" and, more notably, "evolve or perish." While we read the book and noted these themes at the time, even writing papers that discussed lessons learned from the novel, it's very possible that those ideas haven't fully sunk into my head until now. It's true: our choices and their consequences define us and if we don't change, as a result of them, we can't live as successful people. At the same time, everything we do is a choice, every choice we make has a consequence, and every consequence changes us.
Then what does this say about the idea of fate? If we make choices that lead to our personal evolution and, on a greater scale, our evolution as a world culture, is there fate? Are we destined to do things, to make these choices? I don't think it matters either way. Whether or not we act on our free will, we think that we are, so, essentially...we are. So, we make our defining choices regardless of fate, which makes them all the more defining.
Truly, I think that live is about these changes; I think that life is about making changes through clear, rational decisions that improve us. But that's the most important part--improvement. Although we don't really think about it, we do make decisions that push us back. It's what we do following these decisions, the proactive choices that follow them, that will truly move us forwards. So maybe we need to make bad choices in order to progress--we need to screw up to understand how to make ourselves and our circumstances better.
This is why my tattoo is a tree--because they're a symbol of life and growth, and since getting it, I've definitely worked to evolve in my life. And, over the past year, most significantly, the past six months or so, I definitely have changed for the better. It's been really subtle, even hard to detect, but I can feel it and it's great. It's like...when you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and life up your arms.
When you realize you're a different, better person and constantly becoming more this way, you feel happy and more peaceful. Everything just seems to fall into place. Every positive change is like smiling for the first time. It's good.