Do People Change?

Recently I have been confronted with the concept that 'people change'. It has had me thinking very deeply about whether or not I believe this statement. Initially my heart wanted to believe it is true, that people can and do actually change. Sometimes it is even possible to provide what appears to be evidence that change has occurred. In the end I came to a conclusion:
People do not change - but life provides experiences that reveal a person's essence.
The basic essence of a person doesn't change. What occurs is a layering of events as one travels through the multiple experiences of life and these experiences allow us to reveal our essence. For example, someone who survives a major traumatic event does so because they essentially have the ability to do so. They reveal to themselves and others the power to overcome, which was within them all the time, untested. What we see as positive events, like being shot to stardom as a singer, for example, will also reveal the essence of a person in how they handle the experience. The result will always come from whatever was within that person anyway.
So no, I don't believe people change. I believe what we are capable of will unravel naturally when faced with different experiences; that we can only react to things in ways that come from deep within us; that we can even surprise ourselves with the way we pull through a situation, calling on energy from deep within that we didn't know we had, until we were tested. This can be perceived as change, but it is not change, it is something that was there all the time and just needed the right 'experience' to bring it out. I don't believe people can do more than they are capable of doing, but most of us don't know the depth of that capacity.
But it's all semantics.