Changes VIII: encounters

I used to think that Clint Eastwood's movie Unforgiven was a little bit ridiculous. Just because I didn't really think that a woman could change a man. The fact that he finally reverted to his old cold killing self after she died shouldn't have come as a surprise. The fact that she had changed his character at all, and until years after she died seemed pretty far fetched. At least to me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then I met someone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't really get that someone could fall for someone else so fast and so hard. Damn. So hard it hurt. Didn't know that could happen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The point here being that she made me want to be a better person. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now, its worth saying that it didn't go anywhere. I had to take a lesson in humility and acquiescence. I guess life goes on. But when I was trying to make an impression I felt like I had no ammunition. I felt like any charms up my sleeve had been had been corrupted on shallow flirting and social manipulation. I felt like a politician trying to be a real person offside the campaign trail. He suddenly realizes that aside from gimmicky speeches, honestly proving substance comes hard. Trying to be real, I stumbled and choked and I felt a welling within to be better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was no gunslinging killer, but I realized I could be better, that I should be, and that I wanted to be. I suddenly realized what kinds of things motivate people improve themselves. The “WHY” hit me. For her, yes. For friends, yes. For God, yes. Why? Because I was made to be better, it just took some realizing that I wanted to be the way I was made: that this was in fact a very beautiful transformation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past couple of years I have written on my disillusionment with ethics and christian religious life, contouring slowly back to where i have begun to find value in discipline and community once more. I think in more or less words I have decided that it takes seeing oneself as consequential to see a life as something worth improving. The “who” in my life have been cataclysmic.