We humans do amazing things to adapt to our environment: we build houses with heating and cooling, and houses on stilts; we’ve fashioned warm clothing for cold climates, distribution systems for transporting food to places where it can’t be grown, water where there isn’t any (Las Vegas, anyone?), we build dikes and levees to hold back the floodwaters. Scratch that one.

We cope with circumstances, adapt to changes. But is this always a good thing?

I think a lot of us have a tendency to cope or adapt when we shouldn’t. Call it a fear of change, or the comfort zone, or whatever. We tend to put up with things we shouldn’t put up with: abusive bosses, impoliteness, disrespectful children, crime, pollution. We say, “well, there’s nothing I can do about it. I may as well get used to it.”

If there’s a condition surrounding you that isn’t as it should be, don’t just sit and bitch and moan about it, don’t just take it. Don’t cope, don’t adapt.

Do something about it.