Learning from Sagwa

Godol Hador watches a lot of Zoboomafoo, but in my house we also watch Sagwa, the story of a family of cats living in China.

The other day I was sitting in the room when the show was on, and I caught a bit of dialog from the cartoon. Basically, someone was saying that no matter how much you change, you cannot change the basis of who you are. That your true, original "nature" will always remain deep inside you. I guess the reason that I paid attention to this is because this is also how my parents think. To them, it is impossible to change one's nature (which makes for some frustrating conversations in my house: "Mom, stop feeding 5 pounds of fruit to the kids! - I can't stop, it is my nature!"

In general, this seems to be the difference between the Old World attitude, and the typical American attitude of - any change is possible as long as you're willing to try hard enough. And, I guess, I fall in somewhere in between. I do believe that to a certain extent change is possible, but at some point you hit against the limits, there are some basic parts of you that you cannot change.