The best ideas evolve. They last because they were designed to mutate and we allow them to acquire new meanings and significance.

Democracy is one such idea.

What defines "an education" should be another.

What constitutes an advertising "campaign" is still another.

It is in holding so firm to conviction -- to rules, to beliefs, habits and assumptions so long held they seem true -- that we often kill the essence of an idea, we diminish our sense of self, we end a relationship or an empire crumbles.

The danger of love is inflexibility. We hold too tightly, for too long -- and too often for the wrong reasons.

Without an allowance for adaptation, we might never see an idea's true flowering.