My father was trying to explain to me about a moment that happens in one's life, the moment you stop changing. It's the time you just get tired, he said, where gritting your teeth is just too laborious and apathy is not only the easy, but preferred course. It's a point, he made it seem, where an individual is so ingrained in his own identity that it's no longer malleable.

If he's correct, I hope that I have 100 years before that day. It wouldn't be fun, not growing and staying sharp. Besides that, at that moment the stunted individual becomes a danger to those around him.

If one can no longer change--that is to say become better or even just adapt--that individual starts narrowing the circumstances in which he can function in the world, as a happy healthy human being. If you lose the ability to change, you lose the capacity to make the most out of life, which seems like misery. It seems like the beginning of road which leads to hopelessness.

I want to work really hard to stay flexible and be able to change. I think that's what youth is. We all should keep adapting, growing...trying to because we are not perfect beings. We are not god.