Change

Is change possible?  Can people change? Do you really change the essence of who you are?  If you are generally a happy person, can you become an unhappy and grumpy person in old age?  If you are an impatient person can you learn to be patient?  If you have never allowed another person to be intimate with your soul, can you learn to develop deep, meaningful relationships?

I have changed. I have changed important parts of who I am.  I have learned to be patient when in my twenties I was never patient.  I used to be a black and white thinker and now I think in color and do not see things as black and white.  I am more accepting of people and their situations where I used to be judgmental.  I used to keep people at a distance instead of letting them into my soul where they could hurt me and now I am more open to pain as well as deep and intimate relationships.

I recently watched the movie, "Shopgirl"  in which Mirabelle is pursued by two men.  One man Ray Porter, is not willing to change the essence of who he is and in fact keeps himself at a emotional distance in order to protect his heart from pain in the event of a break up.  The other man, Jeremy, embarks on a journey of self-awareness in order to make himself worthy of Mirabelle's affections and win her love.  One man is willing to change, the other is not.  The consequences are apparent in the last line of the movie as Ray states, " [I] feel a loss although [I] purposefully kept Mirabelle at arm's length so that when [I] broke up it would not hurt [me], which it invariably did." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopgirl

Yet, as I experience my relationships with other people, I rarely see them as being open to change.  They seem to view their world as closed as opposed to an open view of how things are, or how they are in relationship to it.  They are not open to changing their political view given new information.  They are not open to change their view of seeing other people as good if they have in the past seen a group of people as bad.  If they tend to be pessimistic, they are not open to seeing the world through optimistic eyes.  If, in the past they have shut themselves down to being vulnerable to intimate relationships, they are not open to deep, meaningful, yet vulnerable and intimate relationships.

Is it possible to change the essence of who you are?