BoldUlysses.com

Do people really change? Can a fundamental shift in someone’s personality occur? I used to think so. As I get older, though, and have encounters with people I knew long ago (high school and before), I’m beginning to form the opinion that people do change on some level, but that change doesn’t extend all the way through their personality. It’s almost as if we have a nucleus of responses to situations that are minutely alterable, but the trappings, the graces that manifest themselves when we have time enough to devote a modicum of thought to what our response will be–only those things are more broadly changeable. I’m coming to realize, in other words, what has been said much more eloquently in other ruminations on the subject–that when we’re pressed, in a situation that demands action or some other immediate response, our true responses–who we really are–only change so much as we get older.

But having said that, I think about the strata of our personalities like instincts, and how through prolonged, insistent application of a behavior (i.e. development of a habit), we can alter, to a degree, our instinctive response. But again, our instincts have different areas of application–some cater more towards a specific skill like driving a car or flying a plane, and some find use in more interpersonal areas, like public speaking or self-defense. So in a sense our instincts still sit on a level above the core of our nature, just by virtue of their specificity. So even if we tailor our instinctive responses in more desirable ways, does the effected behavior truly extend down to the level of our volition, or will we always have to exercise our intent, however rapid, in order to prompt the new behavior? I think of the inner core of our nature as spurring those responses we display without having the time to exercise our will over the matter–our gut responses. Can we change those?

Where did all this come from, you ask? Thoughts about romanticism. Several weeks ago I contacted a young lady I had briefly dated in high school (3-4 months). I hadn’t seen her or communicated with her in over three years. Part of my motive was curiosity–I was genuinely curious as to how she was and what she was up to–but embedded in that curiosity was a desire, however repressed, to see whether there was any possibility of resuming our relationship so many years later. She was my first girlfriend, and as such the whole nature of our time together in high school had all the trappings you would expect–very innocent, hesitant, discovery of the magnitude the newfound emotions–but very chaste. And as such it always retained an unblemished, pristine nature in my memory. The breakup was hard, as the first one is wont to be, but there was never any lingering resentment, nothing to push through, to work out, before resuming the relationship. So to my romantic mind, however much I would suppress the notion, getting back together with her had all the earmarks of a very winning possibility.

Perhaps it’s a foolish desire or vision or what-have-you, but I’ve always told myself that I want to be able to tell my future children a good story about how my future wife and I met, and how we knew each other. And really, what makes a more compellingly romantic story than rediscovering your high school sweetheart? And more than that, one would assume that since we had known each other for so long, our personalities would be attuned to one another and that we would have an instinctive connection, forged during the formative years of our adult personality, that we wouldn’t have with someone we had just met a few years or months prior. That’s what I assumed, perhaps subconsciously at first (my romantic notions run deep), but have been rethinking ever since.

We met over coffee. Yes, there was a certain level of connection, a familiarity in the responses and mannerisms that made me at ease much sooner than I would be with a new acquaintance. And yes, there were things that I knew about her, and she about me, that played a role in the creation of our present-day personalities. So we knew each other on that level. But everything about our lives–our goals, our desires, our motivations and our respective paths–had been so fleshed out since we last spoke that there were fundamental incompatibilities. I wasn’t what she needed or wanted, and she wasn’t what I needed or wanted. Our lives had diverged in deep ways.

And what I came to realize, thinking on the event later, is that there is as much of a possibility that people I had known a long time ago have taken a different tack in life as there is that new people that I meet will share my own. Forget the idea that just because someone has known you for ages, seen you grow up from afar, experienced at least the periphery of the events that made you who you are, that they will necessarily have a more fundamental understanding and thus compatibility with your personality than someone you’ve only just met and have had to tell about your experiences.

I always consider showing better than telling. Experiencing over relating. Living out superior to reading about. And as such I had always fancied myself ending up with someone I had known for a long time, someone to whom I would not have to describe large chunks of my life, years, eras, epochs… No–I would marry a woman who I had known since I first started forming social connections, someone who would just know these things, someone with whom my conversation wouldn’t be peppered with phrases like, “and for the next three years I…” or, “and that happened all throughout sophomore and junior years of college…” But I’ve given up that notion, that desire. It’s unreasonable. My meeting with the young lady showed me that although she may have experienced all those things, that’s still no guarantee that her nature, the sum of who she is fundamentally, with mesh with who I am, deep down, and who I’ve become. Jane Austen’s view, while not true to the extent of this literary exaggeration, does contain some grain of truth:

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Time for burrito creation. The Autozone guy sounded pretty plussed about the possibility of me signing on when I stopped by earlier. Looking for a job is almost a full-time job. But I’m getting closer. Big exam in ground school tomorrow. Wish me luck!