How have your beliefs and values changed over time, and what experiences or insights
contributed to these changes?
I've always liked the lyrics by Modest Mouse "I've changed my mind so much I can't even trust
it. My mind changed me so much I can't even trust myself." It's not so much that I can't trust
myself, but as I've gotten older, I can look back at myself when I was younger and so cock sure
and see that I didn't know enough to be so sure of anything, and I was kidding myself about my
logic and rationalism and ability to think better than everyone else, and I fell on my face
enough time and ate crow enough to realize I don't really have a full picture of anything. I use
the analogy of having a candle taped to my shoe. I can see just far enough ahead to take the
next step, but I'm functionally walking in the dark. I can trust myself enough to take the next
step, but there's so much going on in the dark that I would be a fool to think I really have
anything really figured out. It wasn't any one experience, so much as a culmination of thousands
of little experiences and a few larger ones that led me to realize that my beliefs and values
aren't entirely mine, and they're constantly shifting as I discover new things about who I am,
what I want, the people around me, the changing world, how I want the world to be, who I want me
to be, the culture I was born in, the culture that we're all co-creating. It's mind-boggling all
of the millions of interconnected parts that I have very little to do with that have shaped my
beliefs and values, so as I've grown, I hold my beliefs and values a little more loosely than I
once did, comfortable with changing them as I discover more, and forgiving my old self for
holding beliefs I no longer hold any more.