Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I can transform ya

My favourite English word right now is 'TRANSFORM'. Thank you, Chris Brown.
Just think about the word for a moment. Absorb it. Understand it. It means something becoming something else, right? It makes me imagine a slow movement of liquidy shapes melting into different colours, shapes and sizes. Perhaps, it's the ex-visual media student in me.
But what intrigues me most is the fact that this word applies to the human being (by this I mean mind, body and soul). In 'The Secret', in quantum phyics, it is explained that the human body is capable of transformation. Cells can literally be programmed to change their way of thinking and behaving.
I mean, it makes sense. The natural world is all about transformation. Adaption. Evolution. Plants grow towards the sun. Cubs become tigers. Moths camouflage themselves.
We've gotten so used to our inanimate lives that we've forgotten that we're alive. We aren't computers (okay, computers are sometimes scarily life-like. All that crashing and hanging). We aren't walls and cupboards with nuts and bolts securely in place. We're alive. Our heart is beating. Our blood is moving. Our cells are dying and being born. All at this very moment.
Pure and simple: we're not a product. We're a process.
That's fabulous news to me. I basically don't have to be what I've always been. I don't have to hide behind self-stamped labels. I don't have the EXCUSE to do so. Shy people can make themselves speak up. Plump people can make themselves get thin. The world doesn't have to hate you. And you don't have to always come last.
That doesn't mean we jump on stage sweaty-palmed and stuttering-voiced or pile on the pancakes, thinking "it's alllll in the minnnnd". We make it happen. We do those things we need to do, with faith. Diet, exercise, practise public speaking, study. But do so, with the self-confidence that this time, next time it's going to be different. So I failed last sem or I cheated on my last diet? That doesn't make me a loser. I can be a new me. I can change my cells' memory.
Some of us are actors, playing different roles in one lifetime. Some of us are Lady Gaga. For the rest of us, we don't have to be second-grade Fatso or the college-geek. Maybe you can't be Megan Fox or Kobe Bryant over night. But you sure can be a whole lot better you. You 2.0.
And what do you lose if you try?