who am i today?
This is really interesting to me.
Are we always the same person? Is that little boy with the curly white shock of hair painting a picture the same as the image I confront in the mirror day by day? Or are we merely fragments? Pieces of shattered beings, casualties of a society influenced by trends - fads (only that which is temporary) - what’s new and hip? Years pass. I change. But is it still me? Am I one constantly changing entity? From one year to the next I could be so different that I can’t even recognize myself (my clothes, my hair, even my thoughts) - so how am I still that same person I was 1 or 2 or even 5 years ago?
Memories at first seem like a valid connection to personal identity, but even they seem to fade. It is as if we are a rickety old bridge - our memories are the frayed ropes holding together each separate board that is a fragment of our being. But what happens when the ropes fray further and snap? With the connection gone I am no longer a whole bridge but a section of one drifting completely free of the other. So then how am I attached to that other part of the bridge - what I once was?
Another question I might ask is what about personality? Is that not a relatively defining characteristic? But when we ask ourselves this we must first look at how we define personality. Is it not simply people’s perceptions of us based upon our thoughts and actions which also tend to change? People always seem to change through stages of their lives. They gain new experiences, have epiphanies; events can happen that drastically change their perception of the world and, in effect, their personality. A child going through high school can undergo such extreme changes in their character that it is no longer even recognizable. So if our personality can change it is not really a characteristic that can define personal identity.
If I look through a scrapbook of my life am I seeing one person sectioned off, frozen at different points in their evolution, or am I seeing entirely separate entities, tied together in some rag-tag mismatched sequence? I look at that little white headed boy and I feel no connection, because that’s not who I am anymore.
So how far does this go? Do we stay the same through periods of time then go through bigger changes? Or is it something more? What if we are more like a rock sitting on the beach? Every instant that rock is changing, it is becoming more weathered as the jagged edges are worn away and it becomes smoother. Sure you could take snapshots of that rock through different periods of time to illustrate phases of change, but those pictures would show nothing more than the rock at that exact moment, and an instant later it will have been changed. The rock is never exactly like it had been the moment before. Like the rock I am never the same from one moment to the next - I am an ever changing being. Therefore, without anything concrete to tie our ever changing entities together we cannot really say that we remain the same person over time. Or can we?
Are we always the same person? Is that little boy with the curly white shock of hair painting a picture the same as the image I confront in the mirror day by day? Or are we merely fragments? Pieces of shattered beings, casualties of a society influenced by trends - fads (only that which is temporary) - what’s new and hip? Years pass. I change. But is it still me? Am I one constantly changing entity? From one year to the next I could be so different that I can’t even recognize myself (my clothes, my hair, even my thoughts) - so how am I still that same person I was 1 or 2 or even 5 years ago?
Memories at first seem like a valid connection to personal identity, but even they seem to fade. It is as if we are a rickety old bridge - our memories are the frayed ropes holding together each separate board that is a fragment of our being. But what happens when the ropes fray further and snap? With the connection gone I am no longer a whole bridge but a section of one drifting completely free of the other. So then how am I attached to that other part of the bridge - what I once was?
Another question I might ask is what about personality? Is that not a relatively defining characteristic? But when we ask ourselves this we must first look at how we define personality. Is it not simply people’s perceptions of us based upon our thoughts and actions which also tend to change? People always seem to change through stages of their lives. They gain new experiences, have epiphanies; events can happen that drastically change their perception of the world and, in effect, their personality. A child going through high school can undergo such extreme changes in their character that it is no longer even recognizable. So if our personality can change it is not really a characteristic that can define personal identity.
If I look through a scrapbook of my life am I seeing one person sectioned off, frozen at different points in their evolution, or am I seeing entirely separate entities, tied together in some rag-tag mismatched sequence? I look at that little white headed boy and I feel no connection, because that’s not who I am anymore.
So how far does this go? Do we stay the same through periods of time then go through bigger changes? Or is it something more? What if we are more like a rock sitting on the beach? Every instant that rock is changing, it is becoming more weathered as the jagged edges are worn away and it becomes smoother. Sure you could take snapshots of that rock through different periods of time to illustrate phases of change, but those pictures would show nothing more than the rock at that exact moment, and an instant later it will have been changed. The rock is never exactly like it had been the moment before. Like the rock I am never the same from one moment to the next - I am an ever changing being. Therefore, without anything concrete to tie our ever changing entities together we cannot really say that we remain the same person over time. Or can we?