A Thought On Influence

This was actually written March 3rd. I found it on my thumbdrive and liked it, so I decided to post it.



I'm going to see “Into The Woods” on Thursday. I can't help but remember Century's performance, and assume this one will be the same. It only just occurred to me that Cleveland is an entirely different school, with an entirely different stage, auditorium and people.
So Century's astounding performance will affect my review of Cleveland's. But can I help it? Can we help but be influenced constantly? Things happen, you experience daily life, and it changes you. Every minute we are changing because a minute before you weren't talking, you didn't see that poster, you were happier, you didn't take that latest breath. We are creatures of constant change. The question I pose is, can we help it?
Physically, we cannot. Our bodies act on their own accord, and it keeps us alive. Your diaphragm flexes, your lungs inhale, your hair grows, your cells die your heart beats your eyes blink and all of this is done to keep you alive. How does it feel to know that millions, possibly trillions, of cells have been created and cast off to die simply to keep you alive? This is out of our control. You always change, and grow, in life and death. Do our bodies not rot into dust when our minds have abandoned them? Our flesh deteriorates and we have no control over it.
But do we have control over the mind? The mind, surely, changes just as much as the body, for it is encased in flesh and you cannot have one live without the other. But are we able to consciously control that change after it reaches a certain point? When we are children, our mind is changing much quicker, our nerves are new, and quick to make the electrical connections and solidify memory in order to help us learn. I would not like to have an infant's miniature mind, unless I was able to remember the experience, of which their brain is incapable. Their bodies grow and with it the fleshy prison called the brain. It grows and makes more room for the mind to expand. There are odd connections between our brains and the world. Colors affect our moods, posters influence our choices, music creates emotions, and most of the time we aren't even aware of it. Can we help but be affected by this constantly, when we don't know we're being affected? We don't know we're being altered, ever so slightly, every second of every day, and that those alterations change us. Can we freeze our experiences in time, so as not to ever experience another one? Would that be such an awful fate?
To some, it would. To always be the same, and never see anything new, to never have another new thought, to never have another epiphany. To never change is to never learn. To never grow. But some are afraid of that change, and would pay any price in order to not. So deathly afraid that change isn't better so they would rather live monotonously in life over and over.
We cannot keep from changing. We cannot control it, or stop it, because most of the time we spend changing we aren't aware of it. That is how we cope. Those of us who hate changing, or being controlled, do not realize all the factors that are controlling them, and they don't realize how helpless they are in controlling it. If it does not occur to you, you will not be bothered by it for thought is the beginning of everything.



So there you go. An interesting idea I had a couple of months ago.