This is not a political post, but it’s inspired by one. I was commenting on Dana Bash’s interview of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on CNN, and someone replied about how her stances on issues from 2019. He wrote, “Her answer there was something like ‘my values haven’t changed’ ok cool… sp everything you said in 2019 is still in play. That means she is either not genuine or simply trying to be everything to everyone… that isn’t wise (or viable).”

The answer to this is the Vice President has the right to change her mind. You can still hold fast to your principles, but your approaches to fulfilling them can change based on new information or changing circumstances. She is not the same person she was in 2019.

And neither am I.

I think back to who I was on this date five years ago. I was commuting daily to work in a cubicle. My first novel that was published by a small press, Amiga, was months away from being released. I weighed 262 pounds and thought a fast-food burrito and fries made a perfect lunch.

Today, I work from home. I can send our granddaughter off to school and greet her when she comes home. I have two novels published by that small press, with a third in submission. I now weight 185 pounds and won’t eat a meal without vegetables.

Much has happened in the intervening five years. Most notably, we had the pandemic that changed our lives in fundamental ways we still haven’t come to terms with. But many of those changes were based on decisions I made for myself. I focused on developing technical skills that made me valuable to my employer and gave me the freedom to work independently. I changed how I wrote fiction that enabled me to write better books. I decided to get healthy.

Above all, I responded to a changing world by adapting and growing.

If we don’t grow, we become stagnant. We get stuck in our outdated beliefs and find ourselves left behind by a changing world. We miss out on opportunities and make ourselves obsolete. If I hadn’t made the health changes I did, I might not be here today. We either change or perish.

I’m not the same person I was in 2019, and I’m grateful for it. And as for politics, I choose leaders who are willing to adapt and grow than those who cling to the past.