People change

But only if you let them

A deep cynicism surrounding people’s capacity to change underlies cancel culture.

A single conflict, hurt feelings, or ideological disagreement becomes ground for exile and permanent moral branding.

I’ve lived in a 20-person house for nearly five years—a house with high turnover, meaning I’ll have lived with 100 people soon enough. We live across generations, genders, races, classes, sexualities, ideologies, morals. We live across conflict. When you have a conflict, you keep living with that person, even if the conflict is never resolved. You keep sharing meals, sharing friends, and sharing community. You don’t have to like them. You do have to treat them with dignity, muster as much grace as you can, and act like an adult, for the sake of everyone around you.

It is a learning curve. I see new people move into the community, get rubbed the wrong way by someone being a little too flirtatious or not PC enough, and then start plotting their removal from the house—only to quickly learn it doesn’t work like that.

Living in community like this forces you to practice discernment, to own your own feelings and digest them fully rather than exerting external control attempts upon your environment as a means of running from them.

Living communally, you don’t get to control your environment to suit your feelings. You don’t get to surgically remove conflicts and triggers from your field of vision until your space is safe. You keep living in the midst of conflict and disagreement. Oftentimes, it might feel unsafe. Slowly, you realize the danger never arrives. You fall asleep in safety and wake up in safety. You can’t see eye to eye, but you still make coffee next to each other in the morning. You still eat warm food together, laughing at the same jokes with your shared loved ones. Until one day, you realize you’re safe. Safer, perhaps, than you’d ever feel in the absence of conflict.

Living in community has taught me—slowly, gradually, over the course of years—that conflict does not equal danger. That the absence of conflict does not equal safety. And that my safety, truly, has nothing to do with any of this.

But more than anything?

Living with 20 people for years on end has taught me that people change. Sometimes subtly. Sometimes drastically. Like plants, like waves, like seasons. People can’t help but change. But you have to let them.

You have to let them!

When you witness someone day in and day out, for weeks, months, and years on end, you will witness them change. They will witness you change. Your relationship dynamics will change.

But only if you let them!

You have to remain open to new observations, inviting in new data, with fresh eyes, to allow your perception of them to change in tune with their change. The worst is when someone doesn’t let you change simply because they refuse to see your change, because they don’t want to change their perception.

And that’s the case with most interpersonal ruptures in the age of cancel culture. After exile and banishment, perceptions of someone—their supposed irredeemable sins, moral failings and misdeeds—become calcified.

They are told to change, but they are not allowed to change.

And because you have forever cut ties and contact with them, you are guaranteed to never witness that change. (Aside from, of course, checking up on the internet, where surely you can deduce someone’s moral evolution with the utmost accuracy.)

When someone is beside you, unless you’re devoted to your own stubbornness, you cannot deny their change. You can see it quite plainly—in the tension of their shoulders eased over the years, in their breathing slowed, their laughter lighter. A new dietary restriction, a new partner, a new bedtime. A new speed at which they join you on the dance floor. A new light behind their eyes.

People can’t help but change.