can humans change ( 29 oct 06)

One must have asked oneself, I'm quite sure, whether one changes at all. I know thatoutward circumstances change; we marry, divorce, have children; there is death, abetter job, the pressure of new inventions, and so on. Outwardly there is atremendous revolution going on in cybernetics and automation. One must have askedoneself whether it is at all possible for one to change at all, not in relation tooutward events, not a change that is a mere repetition or a modified continuity, buta radical revolution, a total mutation of the mind. When one realizes, as one musthave noticed within oneself, that actually one doesn't change, one gets terriblydepressed, or one escapes from oneself. So the inevitable question arises: can therebe change at all? We go back to a period when we were young, and that comes back tous again. Is there change at all in human beings? Have you changed at all? Perhapsthere has been a modification on the periphery, but deeply, radically, have you c hanged? Perhaps we do not want to change because we are fairly comfortable....I want to change. I see that I am terribly unhappy, depressed, ugly, violent, withan occasional flash of something other than the mere result of a motive; and Iexercise my will to do something about it. I say I must be different, I must dropthis habit, that habit; I must think differently; I must act in a different way; Imust be more this and less that. One makes a tremendous effort and at the end of itone is still shoddy, depressed, ugly, brutal, without any sense of quality. So onethen asks oneself if there is change at all. Can a human being change?