Now Reading: On Nature and the Possibility for People to Change
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On Nature and the Possibility for People to Change
On Nature and the Possibility for People to Change
A while ago, I read a Russian fable that still sticks with me. It’s about a frog resting on a riverbank when a scorpion approaches and asks for a ride across the river. The frog refuses, he knows what scorpions do.
But the scorpion has a convincing argument:
“If I sting you, you’ll die, and I’ll drown right along with you. Why would I do that?”
Convinced that the scorpion won’t do anything that would put his own life in danger, the frog agrees to help. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him.
“Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die!” cried the frog.
“I’m sorry,” the scorpion says. “I couldn’t help it. It’s just in my nature.”
That last line has stayed with me. It made me think about how people, myself included, often fall back into familiar patterns, even when we know they might hurt ourselves or others. I also thought of moments where I hoped someone would change, only to be let down over and over again.
Can people truly change? Should we expect them to? Or should we, just as the frog, have known better after all?
People’s ability to change
Change sounds simple, but most people would rather wrestle a bear than adjust a familiar routine. New things feel risky. Old habits feel safe. If you want proof, find the coworker who’s been at your company the longest and gently suggest that the file-naming convention they’ve used since 1998 might need a tiny update. Watch the life drain from their eyes. It’s not malice. It’s fear of the unfamiliar.
The first time you do anything is uncomfortable. The thousandth time, it’s automatic. That’s why change feels so heavy: you’re walking away from something your brain already knows how to do, toward something it still needs to figure out. Entire roles exist just to help organizations deal with this, change managers, workshops, communication plans, because resisting change is almost the default human response.
Still, people do change. If we weren’t adaptable, humanity wouldn’t have survived more than a week on this planet. But real change is rarely quick, and it’s never passive. Addiction is a painful example. The desire to change might be strong, but it can take months or years for the brain, and the habits wrapped around it, to follow.
Philosophers have been wrestling with change for centuries. Aristotle believed that character isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you build. Every small choice you make lays down a little groove in who you become. Virtue, for him, wasn’t a fixed trait but a habit, a direction you slowly move in through repetition.
Epictetus took it a step further: you are what you pay attention to. If you keep focusing on the same thoughts, impulses, or distractions, you reinforce them. If you shift your attention, consistently, you carve out new patterns. Change isn’t magic. It’s practice.
William James, the pragmatist, argued something similar from a psychological angle: personality isn’t a finished sculpture. It’s more like clay. You can remold it through repeated action, even when it feels unnatural at first. To him, the best way to change your inner world was to start behaving as if the change is already happening.
And then there’s Nietzsche, who saw change not as a gentle process but as self-overcoming. You don’t drift into becoming a better version of yourself, you fight for it. You overcome resistance inside yourself, not for anyone else’s approval, but because you refuse to stay small. In Nietzsche’s view, real change can only come from within; the moment you’re doing it to please someone else, you’ve already lost the battle.
These thinkers don’t agree on everything, but they land in the same place: people can change, but it requires intention, effort, and ownership. No one can do it for you, and you can’t do it for anyone else.
Should we expect people to change?
There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t wished someone else would change. A baby cries for more attention from its parents. A partner hopes the other will finally listen. A grandmother wonders why her grandkids don’t visit more. It’s a universal desire: please be different in a way that makes my life easier, calmer, or less painful.
But is it realistic? Or fair?
I don’t think so. Even when someone says they’re changing “for someone else,” the engine underneath is still their own desire. The parent who stops smoking for their child isn’t doing it because the child demanded it. They’re doing it because they don’t want to set that example. The motivation still lives inside them.
Kierkegaard understood this well. He wrote about the individual’s responsibility for their own becoming. You can want the best for someone. You can encourage them. But you can’t want their transformation more than they do. If you do, you end up trying to live their life for them. That’s not love or friendship. That’s anxiety disguised as care.
Simone de Beauvoir adds another angle. For her, freedom is sacred. Trying to reshape someone against their will isn’t guidance. It’s domination, even if it comes from a good place. People have the right to choose who they become, including the right not to grow in the direction you prefer.
So yes, we can ask people to change. And sometimes that’s the right thing to do. If you have a friend who talks behind your back, you owe it to both of you to hold up a mirror and say so. That’s not controlling. That’s honest.
But you can only ask once.
If they do it again, you’ve learned something essential. They aren’t capable of the change you’re hoping for, not for you, at least. And at that point, expecting anything different isn’t patience. It’s self-delusion.
You’ve done your part. You’ve communicated clearly. You’ve given them a chance. If they don’t see in that mirror what you see, the rest isn’t yours to fix.
When others won’t change
In the end, not everyone sees the world the same way. People carry different values, wounds, priorities, blind spots. What feels obvious to you might be invisible to someone else. What feels like a fact to you might not land as a fact for them at all. And that’s where reality kicks in: sometimes change just isn’t going to happen, at least not on their side.
The Stoics would tell you to offer someone the chance to improve, but not to stake your peace on the outcome. Marcus Aurelius wrote again and again that you should accept people as they are, not as you wish they were. If someone’s nature leads them to behave in a way that harms you, your job isn’t to fix them. It’s to step aside.
Epictetus was even more direct. Another person’s choices aren’t yours. They’re outside your control by definition. Hoping someone will suddenly become more considerate, more honest, more present, more stable, more whatever… that’s a bet where you hold none of the cards.
And Seneca? He didn’t sugarcoat it. “He who expects much is easily deceived.”
Expectations create disappointment. Expectations built on someone else’s behavior create guaranteed disappointment.
This doesn’t mean you stop caring. It means you stop waiting.
When you pin your wellbeing to someone else changing, you put yourself in a passive position. You wait for them to wake up, realize things, fix themselves, become different. But when you look inward instead, you get options again. You can decide that the thing bothering you isn’t worth the emotional rent. You can look at the good and let the rest slide. As the Epictetus said, you pick the handle you grab the situation by.
Or you can choose a harder but cleaner path: look for people who already are who you need them to be, instead of trying to sculpt someone who isn’t.
Expecting a stone to fly will only leave you frustrated. So yes, sometimes you should have known better. But that doesn’t mean you have to turn bitter. Accept that some people won’t be what you hoped for. Then find the ones who are.
Crossing the river
Expecting people to change doesn’t help anyone. In the fable, both the frog and the scorpion drown. And while the story leans a bit too negative for my taste — suggesting a scorpion will always sting — it offers a fair warning. People don’t always act logically. They don’t always act in ways you understand. And they rarely change simply because someone else hopes they will.
But the fable also hides a second lesson, one that’s easy to miss if you focus only on the sting.
Real change doesn’t start with others. It starts with you.
Maybe the frog’s mistake wasn’t trusting the scorpion. Maybe it was looking outward at all. Instead of wondering whether the scorpion would harm him, he could have asked a simpler question: Do I actually want to cross this river with him? That question is within his control. The scorpion’s behavior never was.
People will surprise you. They’ll disappoint you. Sometimes they’ll grow. Sometimes they won’t. You can offer clarity, kindness, honesty, and a chance, but you can’t carry someone across the river and expect them to become someone new halfway through.
Your responsibility is to know what you choose, who you trust, and what you accept. Change begins there.
