Life is change; stasis is death. I say it again and again and again because people--perhaps myself most of all--need to hear it again and again and again. But how do we change? Or, more precisely and importantly, how do we choose to change? Because externally-induced change is omnipresent, unavoidable, and while not exactly irrelevant, at least not particularly useful as a measure of life success.

I ask this because the directive for change--real, personal, individual change--seems to exist in direct conflict with my other personal primary directive: honesty. I value honesty above all else; I think that without honesty, we cannot reach understanding (and thus faith, mercy, and the ideal/divinity that that trinity represents to me). Normally I come down unequivocally on the side of honesty in all questions of morality--I think "little white lies" are always harmful and malicious despite intentions because they represent an attempt to control another person, which no one has a right to do. But what about when you're trying to control yourself? To change yourself, you have to lie to yourself--you have to keep repeating a lie to yourself, over and over and over, until you believe it. I don't want to hurt people, I don't want to hurt people, I don't want to hurt people... We have to accept what we are, face our deepest, repressed desires and fuck-ups and reconcile with them in order to begin to fix ourselves, but what then? It seems like the only answer is this kind of fucked-up doublethink, lying to yourself and knowing that you're lying but doing it enough that eventually it's true because you believe it is.