The human condition has us constantly face a struggle to accept how little we know. A unique perspective is enough to re-frame our complete understanding of our lives and the people in it. At any given moment there are countless ways in which we are missing the picture obvious to others.

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At a café with a friend, a conversation about a person’s ability to change came up. Mike, the friend at the café, said that people lack the ability to change. That regardless of what the surface might seem like, the internal working of a person, their thoughts and feelings on what they are doing remain the same.

I disagreed. I’ve seen change in the most random or drastic of ways. So, I told him this story:

I knew a guy, 22. A composed individual, he never really broke the rules. He never stepped out of line. Because of this, his life was an endless cycle of following the rules and hating himself for being unable to break out. Self-loathing fueled madness consumed his moment to moment interactions, but he bottled that shit up. He bottled anything unacceptable to the rest of society.

While attending college on scholarship to be a criminal attorney, the way his father always wanted him to be, he worked in a law office. The pay was enough to afford him a car, a single bedroom apartment and enough play money to get that wide screen TV he never used. His tasks at the law office were small and simple, like filing, proofreading, and all the annoying phone call related things like scheduling and…