Word: persons
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...male, I'm a staunch devotee of stasis. I don't believe in epiphanies, personal growth, mid-life crises or deathbed conversions. Millions of years of Darwinian evolution have led to who I am, in addition to everything my parents did to mold me--the Dave Brubeck albums, the fondue, the deification of Danny Kaye, car-pooling me every Wednesday to chemin de fer lessons. And I would consider it an act of ingratitude and betrayal to become an entirely different person. So I try to deal with setbacks and crises in my life the way I always have...
This I buy. Gage, by dint of significant trauma to his frontal lobes, did actually become a different person. But short of being shish-kebabbed on a tamping iron, I'm skeptical...
...questioning the sincerity of people like Rudy who approach crisis as an opportunity for personal growth. But this whole notion that adversity, and especially the specter of fatal illness, should turn you into a better, kinder person is not only erroneous, but it also creates burdensome expectations for people who already have enough trouble. I know a lot of men who've had prostate cancer, and they're the same self-involved, officious, spiteful curs they were before they had prostate cancer. And bully for them. Having cancer is bad enough--you don't have to turn yourself into...
...event that you've never had a brush with death or even an intimation of mortality, here's a quick exercise to determine whether such an experience would change you as a person: In the time it takes you to read this sentence (about seven seconds), you are that much closer to your own inevitable death. Really feel like flouting the Grim Reaper? Reread the sentence (hey, it's your funeral). You've squandered almost 15 precious seconds of your life, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to get that time back...
...that I've afforded you a slight pang of mortality, do you feel any different as a person? More serene? Have you reordered your priorities? Are you more focused or centered...