Several years ago, a friend and coworker of mine first used the term “situational mutant” to describe my work life. He noticed that my daily routine was anything but, and I was called on to fill many roles during the span of one shift. I never really noticed until he mentioned it as I had adapted or mutated into taking it as part of an average day. Fast forward many years and the term resurfaced as a funny memory that also triggered some deeper thought on the subject. Aren’t most people situational mutants? Doesn’t the course of our daily lives cause us to adapt, navigate, and survive in a wide range of situations and events? Are most people even aware that they are mutating to divergent situations in varying environments?
During our average day we can be a child, a parent, a citizen, a mentor, a sibling, a friend, a producer, and a consumer, just to name a few. We make requests and take orders, we create, and we devour, we love, and we dislike, we can teach and be taught. There is no such thing as being static in the human condition unless we are comatose, either physically or mentally, stagnation is something that most humans find offensive unless we impose it upon ourselves. And it seems more and more that is precisely what a growing portion of humanity, especially in the “Developed World”. Is it because that life has really become that boring? Is it because we have dulled our minds and our senses with endless hours of electronic stimulation, hyper-sexualization, and rampant consumerism that we fail to see the diversity in our lives and existence? I feel that is what becomes of us, that we fail to see what is happening in our lives until someone else points it out to us, that we take everything for granted.
The time has come for me to open up about what it is to be a mutant, to journalize and share the experiences of being one person who encounters and adapts to many things, to have likes and opinions on a myriad of divergent topics, to share my experiences and tastes, and hopefully to impart knowledge and wisdom to others who are inquisitive or interested. I really don’t think I am “all that”, I just want to know and share what I am.
“The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” -- Henry Ford
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.” -- Calvin Coolidge
“A mutation can create an alternative form of a phenomenon - a phenotype or trait - and we can learn a lot by seeing this alternative state.” -- Bruce Beutler
“Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.” -- St. Jerome
