day no. 14,969: we are becoming permanently the persons we meant to be only for the moment

Jeremiah 13:23
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

Our habits are hardening us into a particular mold. What we are accustomed to doing is a product of who we are becoming and is simultaneously making us more into who we've decided over and over again to become.

"Consider what power we have over our lives. We shape them to a large extent as we choose, and then, through habit, they tend to harden into the shape that we have given them, as the plaster hardens into the shape which the artist has chosen....

We think that we are acting always from our own choice, that it is no matter what we do now, because another time, whenever we wish, we can do differently. But all the while a certain habit is forming and hardening, until at last we find ourselves almost helpless. Thus, even our tastes, our amusements, our selection of books, the tendency even of our most secret thoughts, are becoming fixed, and we are becoming permanently the persons we meant to be only for the moment.

If the artist takes such pains with the plaster that he is forming, so that it may harden into a shape of beauty, what care should we take of the habits which are to effect so strongly and permanently our bodies, our minds and our hearts." - Charles Carroll Everett, Ethics For Young People