My father’s retirement required him to reinvent himself. He no longer had a job that he needed to get to every weekday at 8 am. He had newfound time on his hands. I’ll say more about how he managed this later.
To reinvent is to re-create, to forge a new approach to something. Charles Darwin explored this in the natural world as something that is random, unintentional. As an example, a mutation causes certain animals, over millennia, to develop long necks and those long-necked animals who live in places with tall trees have an advantage which lets them survive. The mutation “reinvents” the animal and, given a felicitous set of circumstances, the animal is then poised for an increased chance at survival.
But we can also recognize intentional reinvention, especially among humans, reinvention of a religion tradition, reinvention of an institution, reinvention of a person. Without reinvention, things stop in their tracks. With reinvention, continuity is possible.
To reinvent is to re-create, to forge a new approach to something. Charles Darwin explored this in the natural world as something that is random, unintentional. As an example, a mutation causes certain animals, over millennia, to develop long necks and those long-necked animals who live in places with tall trees have an advantage which lets them survive. The mutation “reinvents” the animal and, given a felicitous set of circumstances, the animal is then poised for an increased chance at survival.
But we can also recognize intentional reinvention, especially among humans, reinvention of a religion tradition, reinvention of an institution, reinvention of a person. Without reinvention, things stop in their tracks. With reinvention, continuity is possible.
