mr leopard: hey.. i didn't know it's possible to change my spots

• change is a fundamental feature of our nature as human beings.
• suggests that my character is not set in stone but that i can exercise control over the person that i am and the kind of person that i become.
• I can transcend the label anytime i want simply by changing my behavior.
• It is my actions that define me.
• There is always a possibility for a coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero.
  
• There are many negative labels that we can attach to ourselves - self-absorbed, greedy lazy, cowardly, unassertive and so on. However, if Satre is right ( and i think he is), those labels do not attach to what we are, they attach to what we do. This is very good news as it means that while there is life there is hope. As long as we live, we have the potential to change and develop; to become.
• The ever-present possibility of transcending a label in the future necessarily prevents a person from ever permanently attaching a label to himself... Until death, a person can never arrive at a position where redefinition is impossible.
  

--- selected parts taken off the article "The potential to become" written by Gary Hayden, from "Mind Your Body" of today's Straits Times.