Well, it's starting to look like I might escape whatever illness Dave has. It's primarily an ear infection, we think, and he's on antibiotics. He felt better yesterday but feverish and in pain again last night, so he's kind of up and down.
My boss, meanwhile, came back to work yesterday and it turns out that although she had a sore throat, she never had a fever. So she might have had something else entirely. (She'd run a marathon the weekend before and I suspect she was simply worn out.)
So far, I feel fine. In fact I was hoping to do some walking this weekend, but the weather is supposed to be abominable so that probably won't happen. Perhaps I can finally catch up (again!) with my stack of New Yorkers and start "Great Expectations," which has been sitting neglected on an end table next to the couch.
I did read an interesting New Yorker article this week exploring the idea of identity as our lives progress. Are we the same person now that we were when we were young, or are we essentially an entirely different person, with different behaviors, goals, relationships? Certainly our knowledge changes over time; maybe we change so much, too, that we aren't even the same self anymore.
The article postulates that some people see themselves and their past in a very episodic fashion, in which who they are now is entirely different from who they were, say, 20 or 30 years ago. And others see their lives as very linear, a slow evolution in which their current persona is still related to their more youthful ones.
Personally, I think I'm of the linear variety. When I look back at my teen-aged self, for example, it still feels like me; a painfully and embarrassingly clueless me, but me nonetheless. I can see how the person I was then has become the person I am now. I guess others may feel so distinct from that earlier identity that they don't even see themselves in their own past.
Anyway, it's an interesting idea.
19 comments:
I'm linear too. Apart from two marriages, four kids and multiple jobs, I'm still the same shy quiet me I always was.
Although I often say I’m not the person I used to be, I would still say it’s been a linear transformation. That ‘other person’ helped me become this latest version of myself. Interesting to think about ... and talk about.
I initially thought I would say I am totally different than my youth but the answer has to be linear as well. There is still a lot of my youth in me but my mature self just overrides a lot of it. Not all of it. A couple years ago, I bought a big adult Lego set of a sports car and spent the winter weekends putting it together. It sits above the cabinets where I am typing this response. But I wouldn't have done that in a public venue.
The person I was as a small boy is still me. I am just an older version with more knowledge, more imagery, more experience. I have evolved but the core "me" endures.
Pleased You Are Feeling Tip Top - As For Me Being Me - I Feel The Same Teenage Happy Bouncy Self - Family Views It Through Different Spectacles - I Am Trying My Best To Celebrate My Youth As Much As Possible - Thanx For The Ear Worm Brother Man
Cheers
P.S. Olga Girl Would Love To Find A Treat Under Her Pink Blanket
I read that same article a few days ago. I feel that little girl that I was inside me still - trying to be funny so I can be liked and I can make people feel better. I have always been a friendly and helpful person.
I hope Dave feels better soon and you stay healthy, Steve.
I feel a linear connection to my past. I know the little girl that was me is still in me. I see through her older eyes now.
I'm glad you are feeling well, and I hope Dave starts to feel well soon. Take care there.
Definitely linear here. Although I've grown and changed over the course of my life so far, deep inside I feel like the same essential me I've always been. I still wake up sometimes, remember my current age, and feel momentary shock ("how can that be?!)
Older/wiser but still the same person as the day you were born.
Interesting topic. I will have to think about this one. Some of me has changed . Some has not. There are many things that have influenced me throughout my life.
I'm mostly the same essential person but I've adapted to the various stages of my life. Young Married, mother to little ones, then bigger kids, empty nester, widow, girlfriend, etc. In some ways each one of those stages was like a chapter of my life book that closed. The story has continued with the same protoganist(moi) but has taken me in other directions which have changed me in some (many?) ways. Growth and moving forward mean that we aren't quite the same person we were.
Present day me inevitably sees past versions through the lens of experience, so I suspect I'm a lot different than I think from young me. I think we weave together our concept of self as we go, with the materials available at the time. Interesting to think about.
That is in interesting concept. I think I'm pretty linear too. I sometimes cringe at how naive I was about some things when I was in my teens.
An interesting reflection on how we change over the passage of time. I sometimes muse on the idea that not a single cell of my current body is the same as when I was in my twenties. Every single one has been replaced, or so goes my understanding of science. If that is the case (and not a case of my muddled understanding of how bodies work at the cellular level), then it is only our thoughts and emotions and behaviors and predilections that connect us to our earlier selves, that, and I suppose also the people we continue to love.
Linear here as well. Different and the same. Of course the girl I remember is colored by my own memory that is trying to decide if I am the same or different. I'm wiser and more patient but as my one friend told me, I never had a filter.
Very interesting! I'm going to have to think about this for awhile. I do feel that all the events of my life, both good and bad, have definitely made me the person I am today. I don't think I'd ever want to go back and change anything.
I'm sorry Dave is still feeling poorly, but glad it's nothing dire. I hope it clears up quickly.
sort of an offshoot of nature vs nurture. As a teen and early 20s I was very shy, didn't know how to talk to strangers. whether that was nature or the result of growing up isolated and having to entertain myself coupled with my parents never approving of the people I wanted to be friends with I don't know. I was an introvert, a loner. Now all these decades later I wouldn't call myself an introvert and I have no trouble being around and talking to strangers but I still prefer being alone most of the time. Socializing is tiring. I suppose my chosen path in life, a working artist with an etched glass studio that I had to sell myself to potential clients and architects and designers in order to make a living forced me to be 'social'. So in some ways I'm not the same person but in others, I am.
I'd say that I'm linear too. I need to accept that about myself, I think. I would like to think that I'm a changed being, so different from what I was, that I'm 'new'. But I'm not.
I'm pretty linear. Parts of me have changed -- or maybe just grown up. But the core is similar and seems to have been guided by the past. Sounds like a great article. I'd like to think I've evolved more than changed.
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