Change or Die

My senior year of high school I had an amazing AP English teacher, Mr. Stout. He did a fantastic job not only preparing me for college, but also for life (even though I didn't know it at the time). Mr. Stout was a hard teacher--pushing us to our potential, but he knew what he was doing. We read many books, plays, and poems that year, and we had to study, journal, analyze, debate, listen, process and then synthesize into our own papers. While each piece of literary work had its own lessons and ideas to feed our minds, Mr. Stout had a year long overarching theme for us to focus on. It was our job to discover for ourselves what the human condition is and then be able to back it up with quotes from texts and communicate our concept clearly in our final paper.

The human condition seems to be so grand and complicated, and is difficult to pin down on paper. But since I am no longer limited to the confines of the classroom printed word, I am willing to dedicate this post to it.

I believe that the human condition is about how who we are and who we will be and how we change cannot be separated from each other. For in every moment, with every realization and experience, we change. Even our constant longing for answers and enlightenment is an example of this. And while history does repeat itself, and there are clearly cycles and patterns, it is still change and progress.

It might sound a little silly, but I found a great quote today while watching a rerun of 7th Heaven. One of the characters, Simon, said, "Change or die. These are my options?" Now, of course, he was being an over-dramatic teenager, but I think the sentiment is accurate anyway. It's true on any level: emotional, mental, physical, spiritual. The moment we stop adapting and evolving is the moment we stop living.

It is the human condition to perpetually be in a state of change. Now...to qualify my statement would take a lifetime--so for the present time, I will simply say there are certainly different levels of morphing and of fixity. And I, for one, am happy life changes.