frogs and boiling water

They say that if you place a frog in a pot of water from its own pond and slowly raise the heat to boiling the frog will stay there, unaware of the subtle increases in temperature until it finally boils to death. However, if you were to place the same frog into a pot of boiling water it would jump right out, scalded but still alive.
I've been thinking a lot about frogs and boiling water lately, and I think that people are the same way. You see, if something big happens in life we take notice, we take action. In other words, we jump out of the pot! The thing is, life isn't just a handful of major events worthy of our attention. Life is made up of all the tiny changes that we don't notice until one day we realize we've boiled to death. I guess that sounds a lot worse than I mean it to. What I mean is, most of life just passes by until the final bit falls into place and we notice that things aren't as we thought they were. Maybe you'll realize you've finally arrived (I suppose we're all sort of waiting for that kind of realization) or perhaps you'll realize that things have kind of deteriorated. In either situation, by the time you take notice, things have already played out. You've lost the ability to change the course of events. You can't get out of the pot.
The great thing about being a person rather than a frog is that there is more than one chance at this whole pot of water business. If we fail to pay attention the first time and end up boiled, we get another chance. We can watch for the bubbles forming at the bottom of the pot signaling that that things are not what they seem.
I've always heard that your whole life can change in an instant. I think a footnote should be added to that saying only one word, rarely. A much truer statement is this: life changes every instant. Life changes as a result of the little things we do every single day. I'm not saying that the big things don't happen. We can come across pots of boiling water, but when those come we're built to react. Far more often we face the pot of familiar water just waiting to to turn up the heat. The lesson to take away from frogs is to be wary of getting too comfortable. Things are almost never as secure as they seem.