Corine HarpeFor the past couple of weeks, I have been teaching sixth-grade students about character traits. We have been exploring ways to discover who a literary character is as a person through a variety of methods.
My students often confuse a character’s traits with his or her feelings, and I must correct them, telling them that a trait is revealed by the character’s personality.
As teachers, we often more about a subject ourselves by actually teaching it and, as my class and I explored literary characters, it led me think about the concept of personalities, who we are as people and what it means in my own life.
I began to question whether or not people really change. Now that I am in my late 20s and becoming more firmly established in adulthood, I have come to believe that people do not stray very far from their personalities, which I have most clearly seen through their decisions and opinions.
For example, it seems that lazy people whom I knew during my school days, the type not motivated to do anything and who also are very needy, struggle to find and keep jobs as adults.
I knew people in childhood who were very particular about details and organization. Even at a very young age, everything in their room was organized in its proper place. These young organizers grew up to be even more particular adults, always having a plan and a place for everything, the envy of the organizationally challenged.
Me? My parents battled to keep me from throwing my clothes on the floor.
There are those who consistently see the world in a bitter and angry light. They seem always to recognize the negative in everything. There are others who are the opposite, and it seems that nothing can upset them.
There are those who are always jealous of others; others who are selfless. There are introverts and social butterflies.
No matter the circumstances, however big or small, many times I have found myself predicting how a person will react or the actions they will take based on their personality. These predictions are almost always accurate.
So do people ever change? I know there is the belief that people change all the time but, in my experience, I have not seen such changes. It seems to me that adults rarely abandon their fundamental habits or world views built when they were younger.
Certainly, if people truly want to change, they can, but it also seems that they can easily fall back into particular habits of thinking and acting. Perhaps as with any new habit, it takes a while to establish a different pattern or routine.
For me, there seems to be some comfort in knowing what to expect from people, but mystery is also inherent in the human personality. It is difficult to determine when, how or why people might change, and this causes us to wonder about the people in our lives.
Contact Corin Harpe at corinharpe@gmail.com.