The Dam Would Break

So, we just finished watching Mona Lisa Smile. Cute movie. Not a Dead Poet's Society caliber, but inspiring none the less.

It got me to thinking about how to help people transition and change and progress.

You see, I was talking with a friend yesterday. She was telling me about how some people around her are starting to ask questions, picking apart at their own foundational lives and understandings. It got me to thinking about how we begin change in opposition, you know?

I'll explain: I find that I change easiest when I am in an environment of somewhat like-minded individuals who are talking about things in ways that lead me to oppose them on first impulse. But over time, I find myself beginning to embrace or at least understand their side. But it all begins in opposition.

Still, for those of us on 'the other side' (of whatever that may be), we long for the dam to break in others' lives. You know, that they'd just get it.

But dams breaking is incredibly messy and you have to use fierce amounts of destruction (just look at what this administration's enforcing of a paradigm shift in the Middle East is doing). But if you can pick away, brick by brick, then eventually the dam will give and it will be much less painful to transition.

That's what I liked about the movie. That Julia Roberts slowly picked away (with a few bursts here and there) at these girls understanding of life and reality, then the dam broke for a few of them... but in their own time.

I just thought that was helpful to remember. People change slowly with sudden bursts here and there.