MY STAND ON CHANGE

Disclaimer: I love Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and I will forever quote Lewis Carroll

"People don't change, they only get softer," said Lex the Clone to his father. This was from a Smallville season 4 episode, if you were interested. So this episode deals with an experiment gone wrong, creating the mean, tougher badass annoying version of Lex. The real Lex argues that the other one is just a clone and not at all part of him. The clone then takes a shot at him, "are you sure?", implying that he was everything Lex suppressed and he in fact is the real deal.

Do I believe people change? No. Funny. My favorite quotes are mostly about change:

• ..Step out of the person you've been and be the person you're meant to be. -One Tree Hill
• We cannot step twice into the same river. - Heroclitus
• I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle! -Alice in Wonderland
• I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'- Alice in Wonderland
  

So what do I think? I'd have to side with Parmanides on this. Nothing can become anything other than it was. There is no actual change. I believe that we only become less or more of what we are.. sort of like.. well the volume adjustments on your TV or Ipod or computer. I believe that we can be different levels of who we are. Who controls this? I don't know, I'd like to believe we hold the remote controls to adjust ourselves but then there are so many other factors like different circumstances, situations so I don't think you can solely pinpoint the person.

What I do know is at the end of the day, you are who you are - beginning to end, no excuses.

Things change, people don't have to.

The Duchess: Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. - Alice in Wonderland