Turn and Face the Strange

A common presumption runs through the e-mails that whatever the problem, Future Me will have more courage, more power to act.

Lifted from an interesting article over here that lets you archive and send an e-mail to your future self.

I recently flipped through Moneyball, which attempts to examine the system behind Billy Beane's operation of the Oakland A's (baseball, for those of you who are sportily ignorant), and one of Beane's driving tenets is that people don't change. This is why certain statistical categories are better predictors of major league success than others; because the trends that a person establishes over their college career will continue in later life. Of course, in his case he's talking about their tendencies as baseball hitters, not trying to make some sort of grand statement about life.

I also stayed up way too late watching Unforgiven a few nights ago, a movie in which Clint Eastwood spends the first half repeating, "I ain't like that no more," but he is; indeed, it is all he is, as suggested by the very title of the movie - it doesn't matter what he goes on to do with his life, his past and his past identity will always a part of him. Externally he's changed, but the core remains, waiting to be called upon.

I'm sure there are all sorts of literary sources which point towards the possibility of change and redemption, but if we're being honest, what makes those stories attractive is the idea that someone can change, that people can identify and rectify their faults, which somehow makes up for any horrible things they might have done in the past, right? Perhaps the reason why people find those stories so attractive is because they identify our own fears about the actual impossibility of change and subsequent redemption, and assuage them with a fluffy little fairy tale about how anything is possible.

I know, I'm going out on a limb here, but it's been a while since I've written anything.

As a random aside, I feel pretty confident saying that Clint Eastwood gives the best reading of the word, "Yeah," in the history of cinema.