The more things change the same...
Back when I worked on my thesis in college (was it really all that long ago?), I learned that while a lot of things change as you age, one of the few things that doesn't is your personality. I have no real arguments for or against that fact, but I have wondered about it. How much have I changed since high school? Since college? And is it really change, or have I simply fleshed out more of the personality traits that had always been there? I guess, philosophically speaking, that the answers get to the fundamental issues of what constitutes identity, and how (or whether) identity can change. But that's getting too metaphysical for me right now. I'm no longer at the stage in my life where I feel compelled to unearth the profound. Perhaps that comes with maturity... or is it apathy... or wisdom... or laziness? (Is that a personality change?) Either way, as I think about who I was and who I've become (and who I'm becoming), I'm the same, but different. I wouldn't call it a change; a "shift" is probably more appropriate.
I am still acerbic (but more sparingly), still passive-aggressive (but not as much as I used to be), still sarcastic (but in moderation), and still introverted (but maybe less than before). Since I started this journal over 8 years ago, I've gained some self-confidence and humility that probably should have been cultivated long ago, but at least they've been developed. I still think in parentheticals and speak in ellipses and write with semi-colons, but perhaps with more control and less restraint than I used to. Words come quicker now, but leave more slowly, and I'd like to think that the extra time to percolate is worth it.
Now happily settled in my quarter-life oasis, I've become more comfortable with myself in a way that would have seemed astounding to me-at-sixteen. In all honesty, I now see myself as a more horrible person than I used to, but for some reason, it bothers me less and motivates me more. Is that what maturity is all about? Is that what growing up is? Confronting the unflattering truth of your own human fallibility and personal foibles, while having the narcissism to turn that knowledge into a way to improve yourself as a human being? Kind of a pleasant thought, but I half-suspect I'm making all this up to feel as if I've made real progress in life... and that's the real issue here.
We humans have this base ontological desire for purpose and meaning. Regardless of whether I've changed or stayed the same, I'd like to think that it's all building toward something... something... (good? worthwhile? fantastic? profound?). But making normative statements like that makes it all meaningless anyway. It's like having a lump of clay and working it with your fingers, then hoping that, at some point, it will become art. When do your fingers stop kneading (do they ever stop kneading?), and if, when the kneading stops, it's still a lump of clay, does it matter that it was ever kneaded before?
The crisis in my oasis is the tiniest suspicion that everything means nothing, and that things happen because they happen, and not because they're supposed to. It comes from this nihilistic/existential/postmodern modern mentality that smart kids in our generation seem to love, but it's always made me uncomfortable. I'm wary of people who find satisfaction in disorder and meaninglessness, even if it means for them, paradoxically, a satisfaction with truth. There's just something so aberrant and abhorrent about destructing and deconstructing meaning, as if we're pretending to make intellectual progress by tearing down the progress we've already made. But progress and regress are normative, too, and now I'm trying to be too philosophical again, and we've already established that I'm either too mature or not wise enough to do that.
To recap: I'm still the same, but maybe a little different, but either way I want to know it means something. The problem is, how will I ever know, and furthermore, does it really matter? And if it doesn't matter, why does the prospect of not caring make me so uneasy?
Turns out, I've still got a proclivity for prolixity, too.
I am still acerbic (but more sparingly), still passive-aggressive (but not as much as I used to be), still sarcastic (but in moderation), and still introverted (but maybe less than before). Since I started this journal over 8 years ago, I've gained some self-confidence and humility that probably should have been cultivated long ago, but at least they've been developed. I still think in parentheticals and speak in ellipses and write with semi-colons, but perhaps with more control and less restraint than I used to. Words come quicker now, but leave more slowly, and I'd like to think that the extra time to percolate is worth it.
Now happily settled in my quarter-life oasis, I've become more comfortable with myself in a way that would have seemed astounding to me-at-sixteen. In all honesty, I now see myself as a more horrible person than I used to, but for some reason, it bothers me less and motivates me more. Is that what maturity is all about? Is that what growing up is? Confronting the unflattering truth of your own human fallibility and personal foibles, while having the narcissism to turn that knowledge into a way to improve yourself as a human being? Kind of a pleasant thought, but I half-suspect I'm making all this up to feel as if I've made real progress in life... and that's the real issue here.
We humans have this base ontological desire for purpose and meaning. Regardless of whether I've changed or stayed the same, I'd like to think that it's all building toward something... something... (good? worthwhile? fantastic? profound?). But making normative statements like that makes it all meaningless anyway. It's like having a lump of clay and working it with your fingers, then hoping that, at some point, it will become art. When do your fingers stop kneading (do they ever stop kneading?), and if, when the kneading stops, it's still a lump of clay, does it matter that it was ever kneaded before?
The crisis in my oasis is the tiniest suspicion that everything means nothing, and that things happen because they happen, and not because they're supposed to. It comes from this nihilistic/existential/postmodern modern mentality that smart kids in our generation seem to love, but it's always made me uncomfortable. I'm wary of people who find satisfaction in disorder and meaninglessness, even if it means for them, paradoxically, a satisfaction with truth. There's just something so aberrant and abhorrent about destructing and deconstructing meaning, as if we're pretending to make intellectual progress by tearing down the progress we've already made. But progress and regress are normative, too, and now I'm trying to be too philosophical again, and we've already established that I'm either too mature or not wise enough to do that.
To recap: I'm still the same, but maybe a little different, but either way I want to know it means something. The problem is, how will I ever know, and furthermore, does it really matter? And if it doesn't matter, why does the prospect of not caring make me so uneasy?
Turns out, I've still got a proclivity for prolixity, too.