Consistency is overrated

During election season, there are often sound bites passed around which depict a candidate saying something offensive when they were significantly younger, sometimes in their twenties or even their teens. The takeaway message is always, “Is this the kind of person you want in office?”

I understand the validity of this if the candidate still expresses the same attitudes today, and so it’s meant to show that they haven’t grown. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Almost always, it’s meant to imply that an opinion someone holds in their youth is a defining part of their permanent nature. That assumption is not only unfounded, but unfair. How many of us cringe when we recall insensitive, bigoted, or just plain ignorant things we said when we were younger? Everyone deserves a chance to be seen as a more evolved version of our former selves, as long as we actively demonstrate it and denounce the harmful things we used to espouse. In that case, changing your mind isn’t hypocrisy. It’s maturation.

If the candidate is known for flip-flopping, that’s another story. Tailoring your core values to your audience, rather than just adjusting the presentation, is dishonesty. That deserves to be called out. All the same, I think it’s rarely relevant to try to prove a point by showing a clip of someone being foolish in college.

This relates to the way that consistency is falsely assumed because it's so overvalued. You hear a lot of quotes like, “Don’t make fun of other peoples’ appearance when you’re not attractive yourself” or “Don’t use the Bible to be homophobic unless you follow all of its rules.” Why is being hateful toward the LGBT+ community somehow more acceptable if you’re religiously consistent? Why is it more excusable to harass people about their looks if you are traditionally attractive?

It’s better not to hold horrible beliefs at all, whether or not they’re consistent with other behavior or with beliefs one has held in the past. Unfortunately, the allegiance to sameness—even sameness to your self—can cause many to stubbornly cling to bad ideas.

The cycle

Raindrops on a window split apart and join together, mimicking both mitosis and its opposite. They depict life's origins. They show both the return to our beginnings and our separation from them as we forge new identities. Throughout our lives we stray from our roots and return to them over and over again.

Rains feeds the ocean, the subconscious mind, full of murkiness and unfamiliar things we come to recognize. The subconscious gives birth to conscious ideas, like aquatic creatures evolving to dwell on land.
               Both conscious and subconscious thoughts have life cycles. They're born, feed off of other thoughts, breed further notions, and pass on. Sometimes they're reincarnated as more evolved ideas and then materialize as more raindrops on the window.

Love and growth

Love of any kind is supposed to help you grow, but there's a distinction between adding to a person's identity and just stretching it out. When you do the latter, you think you're helping them grow but are really just spreading them thin with unrealistic expectations.

Healthy love is a weird paradox. You consume each other without depleting one another; supplementing what was there to begin with.