Why Do People Change?

I am not the same person I was a year ago, or a month ago, or a week ago, or yesterday. I morph constantly, shedding the skin of old demeanors. I am not a better person than I was, nor am I a worse person. I am just a person.

Does this happen to everyone? Or is this just a symptom of my youth? Do adults feel the same? Is it fickleness to change one’s beliefs, or an evolution of logic? I am changing ideas, opinions, and personality. Or maybe I am not changing at all. Maybe I have constructed a self-inflicted illusion to help me cope with what I do not know.

As a child, my thoughts were very simple. My goal was to gain happiness as quickly as possible. With a brain like a cardboard puzzle, I pieced together simple pathways of thought. Want to play? Get a toy. Want to move? Go outside. Hungry? Eat. Upset? Cry.

At my age, I can now construct ideas my tiny child mind could not have begun to comprehend. I can understand religion, politics, and relationships. I can challenge the fundamental fountains of moral code. I can pick apart logical pathways. I can understand the point of view of other human beings, without having ever experienced life as them before. I have new emotions that I never experienced as a child,

But this is the same for everyone. Why do we change so dramatically? Why could not we have all stayed as simple as the animals? I like to believe that it is because each human is a complete work of art; they are a tapestry of perfection and flaws, mood and logic, hope and hopelessness, love and hate. Each human is a unique, special, beautiful masterpiece unseen before in all of history. No two people are alike.

But, even as this is, we are not so simple. This is why we change—we are not stagnant like paintings, but transforming artworks. We are nebulas, exploding constantly, expanding, changing hues, all to become one beautiful creation. My advice is to embrace the change, and to continue to love getting older; you are adding more to your beauty.