Hate on and love through unrepining hours

I've always heard, though things like DARE, healthy relationship week, and the crazy ladies at DressBarn who're always eager to spout microcosmic life advice, that change is good, but changing for the sake of other people is bad. And for all the iterated, reiterated, and overiterated reasons for that, I more or less agree.

So is it ok to consciously change at all? I might be wrong, but I think most people would say, "um, yeah." That's kind of what New Years resolutions are all about, let alone diet programs, self-help books, and yoga.

But now that "other people" have been taken out of the equation, why would anyone ever feel the need to change? Maybe, you could argue, for intrinsic self improvement. But why would you desire to improve yourself if not to achieve societal ideas of what's good? Why would you be "intrinsically" dissatisfied with yourself if not because there's a standard that you've ranked yourself against and felt lacking? Maybe, then, through natural developmental processes. But isn't the way you develop intimately related to whom and what you interact with?

Actually, the only motivation for change that I would consider human-free would be for religious/principle purposes. Which doesn't necessarily hold water, either, since it, in turn, would undoubtedly spark a debate among people who sit in high-backed velvet recliners and smoke pipes about whether lofty principles and spiritual standards really are divinely/independently transcendent or are really based on thousands of years of a developing human consensus of right and wrong.

And in reality, in most societies, it's totally acceptable to change for other people. Just as long as it's a positive change and not a step in the perceived wrong direction (going from an axe murderer to flower enthusiast would be green lighted, but the reverse trip would probably be frowned upon).

So it's pretty unlikely that any change that occurs in you wasn't prompted by someone else. The difference between head shakes and hand shakes is simply in which direction the change occurs in relation to the values of the environment.

It's trains of thought like these that make sociology simultaneously seem completely essential and like a total waste of time.