People Don't Change

Well isn't that a dirty rotten lie? People constantly change based on their environment, present company, hell even their diet changes people. People change every day to accommodate new information, beliefs, television advertisements and those warning labels on the sides of washing up liquid.

But on a grander scale, do they really change? Do they change their base nature? Is this change simply growth?

I like to think change is not only possible, but probable and occurs every few years. Here's a quick run through of my personal timeline.

Born shy, my mother likes to tell the story of how when I was 2 or 3 (or whatever the appropriate age for sentences is) I asked a friend of hers who was visiting at the time "are you not going home yet?" Even at this young age, I was not a social creature.

Fast forward to primary school. I was still not crazy sociable. I got along with everyone at least a bit, I had some close friends, but primary school was surprisingly challenging. It was, more than anything, a seven year long popularity contest where I was never the winner, but never the loser. For a lot of it I was stuck very much in the middle, the physical manifestation of an "Average Joe". Average James as it were. Worst super hero ever. "Quick come help us Average James! There's a fire!" I would stand at average height and run to the scene at the average running speed of 8 mph and inform everyone that the fire brigade would be here soon.

That quickly became the most boring hero ever...

But yeah primary school was your typical be-friends-with-the-cool-kids fiasco. And I remained the overweight, introverted kid who's talents lay with a pen and paper rather than with, say, physical exertion of any kind.

I stayed that way until the end of my 4th year at secondary school. That year, the french classes were offered the chance to go on a trip to France for a week. Officially it was to help us absorb French culture and test our french speech. Really it was a trip to Disney Land. Who could turn that down? You look me in the screen and tell me you would turn that down. I dare you! I'll control alt delete and end task your ass.

Anyhoo, on this trip I began to realise that people outside my comfortable group of friends and outside of the library weren't as scary or as crappy as I had thought. Other people were actually kind of cool. There was a swimming pool at the hotel we were staying at and I, having done swimming lessons for many years when I was younger, wanted to give it a go. I had my old trunks I hadn't worn in a few years and it never even occurred to me that they wouldn't fit. In retrospect it wasn't my brightest move. Oh well. But I did one length in this pool and thought to myself "swimming didn't used to be this hard did it?"

So when I got home I took up swimming again. Every Friday after school I would toddle on down to my local leisure centre and swim as much as I could. This was the first time I'd decided to physically change something about myself. Before then I just didn't care how I looked. I was comfortable with my permanent bed head that made my sisters cringe, I was comfortable wearing the same old jeans and t shirt that, again, displeased my eldest sister who craved variety in my fashion choices, and I just didn't care that I was wearing trainers with jeans just because it was comfy. I'm a function over fashion kind of guy. Still am, and all of those things I still do, except the hair, it just stopped going that way. So yeah first physical change.

Soon after that I made my first personality change. And it wasn't a personality change to fit in with a group of people who I thought were "cool", it was just something I wanted. I wouldn't go as far as to say I hated the kind of person I was, but I was by no means happy with it. This is the part I'm the most silently proud of. When I simply decided to become confident. People can and do change. All it takes is the will. And it didn't hurt that I lost a metric crap-tonne of weight. I decided to be confident and make new friends and that's exactly what happened. It's what I consider to be my greatest achievement, proving to myself that I can literally be whatever I want.

Secondary school contained the biggest changes for me sure, but even at University now I'm fine tuning things. I'm learning to be less passive, as in if something bugs me I don't just shake it off, I think hard about whether than actually bothers me and if, later, I'll regret having not said anything. I won't sit there and be yelled at anymore. If someone yells I will yell right back and then some.
And I'm swimming so much more. I got a membership for the year so I can just walk in whenever I want.

So the moral of the story is, don't let pessimists (like me) and cynics (like me) tell you people don't change. Don't let them shake their head and say "even if they do, they don't change much". I am a completely different person from even 5 years ago. God that wasn't that long ago. But there you go. Change is capable in the greatest and smallest of ways.

You just gotta want it.


Well that one got serious didn't it?