Things Have Changed

I have recently realized just how different of a person I am now versus what I was when I was in high school. It is nice to look back and see just how far I have come. It is like looking in the rear view mirror of a car. You can recognize all of the things that you have passed, or done in the past but you can see them from a completely new angle. They may have influenced your driving when you were on that part of the road, and brought you to where you are now but they aren't really that relevant to you any more. Looking at them you see them in a new light. Because of those obstacles that you drove passed then were important then, but now you have changed because of them, and they no longer have the influence on you that they used to.

In high school I was worried about things that I could care less about now. I was going to do things that are completely different from what I am doing now. I had different goals, some of them I have obtained and others I have abandoned. I don't think I have a single goal now that I share with the me from then. I had different interests and priorities. I had a different temperament, and after taking the Mayor Briggs personality test again I have changed from an extrovert to an introvert in the last few years.

Though I cannot separate my life now from what I was then, because we are all a result of our past experiences. I have learned that I am so different now that if I were to encounter the same types of situations that I was in then I would act completely different. Like that episode of the StarTrek when Picard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZBH_UrclsI) gets the opportunity to undo the incident where he had been stabbed through the heart, and it changes his whole life. He never ends up having the same life experiences and soon realizes that he would rather have die then than change the opportunity he had to become the man he was. Though if he met another instance where he had to make a similar decision that would then affect his future he would chose a different rout because his experience with being stabbed help him to make a better decision in the future. But he needed the experience being stabbed to become who he was and to learn how to make that good decision later. Your experiences may suck but you will need them for later.

I feel that I have grown like that in the last few years. That my experiences now inform my present and that these changes have made me better. I run a life that has structure, I take care of my body, I have learned how to interact with people that would have otherwise upset me in the past. There are so many virtues that I have bettered in myself. I hope that I can continue this kind of growth for the next years of my life. I feel that these life experiences have improved me so much, that the person I was is so changed, that I doubt I could recognize me any more if the old me and the new me were to face each other.

I want always to continue this kind of progression in my life so that I don't ever stand still. Because there really is no such thing as standing still. You either go forwards or backwards, and I will always choose forwards.