on freedom and change
In the cold frost of Beijing, on the outskirts of the Forbidden City, I asked my dad: "Can people change?" to which he replied: "People cannot change their character; after a certain point, at best they can only suppress or manage it. After a certain point, whatever traits they have cultivated becomes their easiest and most natural course of action. It would take something immense for them to change, and even then I think only God can change them." Matt too, said: "People don't change. They might try, but everyone goes back to whatever they're used to doing."
This made me so terribly sad.
I'd like to think: people can change. The realty is that it requires an immense amount of self-awareness, conviction and commitment, and the vast majority of people lack any or all of the three in some capacity, which renders most attempts to change useless. But it's possible. It has to be.
I.
There's a poignant quote in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard To Find, wherein one of the central characters, a flawed and prideful grandmother, finally figures the whole compassion and self-awareness thing out at her very last moments before the Misfit shoots her: “She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if there had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life.” Whatever the interpretation, the implication is profound: people can be aware of change and realize they need to change due to information they gain through life experiences and maturity, but humans are fallible and would need to be reminded every moment to not succumb to their weaknesses.
II.
I've been reading a lot of existentialism again. Sarte says on bad faith and self-deception: "How can we blame another for not being sincere or rejoice in our own sincerity since this sincerity appears to us at the same time to be impossible? How can we in conversation, in confession, in introspection, even attempt sincerity since the effort will by its very nature by doomed to failure and since at the very time when we announce it, we have prejudicative comprehension of its futility? In introspection I try to determine exactly what I am, to make up my mind to be my true self without delay -- even though it means consequently to set about searching for ways to change myself. The essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere woman constitutes herself as what she is in order to not be it. Total, constant sincerity as a constant effort to adhere to oneself is by nature a constant effort to disassociate oneself from oneself... Sincerity does not assign to me a mode of being or a particular quality, but in relation to that quality it aims at making me pass from one mode of being to another mode of being."
III.
(She said: “There’s always gonna be a part of me that’s sloppy and dirty, but I like that, with all the other parts of myself. Can you say the same about yourself, fucker?! Can you forgive?”)
This made me so terribly sad.
I'd like to think: people can change. The realty is that it requires an immense amount of self-awareness, conviction and commitment, and the vast majority of people lack any or all of the three in some capacity, which renders most attempts to change useless. But it's possible. It has to be.
I.
There's a poignant quote in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard To Find, wherein one of the central characters, a flawed and prideful grandmother, finally figures the whole compassion and self-awareness thing out at her very last moments before the Misfit shoots her: “She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if there had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life.” Whatever the interpretation, the implication is profound: people can be aware of change and realize they need to change due to information they gain through life experiences and maturity, but humans are fallible and would need to be reminded every moment to not succumb to their weaknesses.
II.
I've been reading a lot of existentialism again. Sarte says on bad faith and self-deception: "How can we blame another for not being sincere or rejoice in our own sincerity since this sincerity appears to us at the same time to be impossible? How can we in conversation, in confession, in introspection, even attempt sincerity since the effort will by its very nature by doomed to failure and since at the very time when we announce it, we have prejudicative comprehension of its futility? In introspection I try to determine exactly what I am, to make up my mind to be my true self without delay -- even though it means consequently to set about searching for ways to change myself. The essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere woman constitutes herself as what she is in order to not be it. Total, constant sincerity as a constant effort to adhere to oneself is by nature a constant effort to disassociate oneself from oneself... Sincerity does not assign to me a mode of being or a particular quality, but in relation to that quality it aims at making me pass from one mode of being to another mode of being."
III.
(She said: “There’s always gonna be a part of me that’s sloppy and dirty, but I like that, with all the other parts of myself. Can you say the same about yourself, fucker?! Can you forgive?”)