Running Away In Order to Thrive

 It's been a week since I watched Adaptation and the same scene is stuck in my memory: 

Laroche: "Adaptation's a profound process. It means you figure out how to thrive in the world." 

Orlean: "Yeah, but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. You know, they just move on to whatever's next. But for the person, adapting is almost shameful, like running away." 

While there are major parts of the film that I didn't enjoy, and I doubt that I would go back and watch it a second time, this scene made the two hours that I spent watching the film worthwhile. It made me re-analyze some of the major decisions I've made - leaving public school for boarding school my junior year, transferring from my first college to Bryn Mawr after my freshman year, and gave me a new perspective. While I feel that I ultimately made the decisions that were right for me at the time, and I wouldn't take back any of it, I couldn't shake feeling that I was developing this pattern for running away, an algorithm if you will. I felt guilty for whatever reason, and felt the same shame that Orlean mentions, wondering why I couldn't figure out how to thrive in one place. Like I was weaker for not being able to figure it all out the first time around. But now I see that I was meant to move on to all of these different places, and that I wouldn't have thrived if I had stayed put. Just because people stay in one high school or one college, that doesn't mean that they are learning to thrive more than I am - it could be the exact opposite. They could just be stunted in place, to afraid to move on. 

Adaptation, and evolution, takes courage and acceptance, and in a way it also involves our own agency. Things are going to happen regardless of our effort, but without our mental willingness we will be just physically moving through life, not willing to mentally process how we are changing. The physical may be controlled by the greater powers at be, and we may not have much of a say in it, but how we perceive the changes we encounter is what really makes the difference - it's how we change.