2024-04-02
The original version of this post was pretty darn good. I've taken a lot of snippets from it-
It spent a long time trying to understand why its self seemed so radically different before and after sunset, or why it had different modes of behavior with different strengths and ideals and skills and feelings, or any number of other variances- and yet it still perceived a singular "I". Others do not talk about the shifts inside them. One feels crazy noticing what others seem to ignore.
There is a certain amount of hoop-jumping that happens trying to explain it all. "Mood swings", genderfluidity, context-dependent ego states, voices, delusions, parts; trying to excuse it all away, researching psychosis, digging into subdivision of the mind, ripping apart what sense of self one had; yet the pieces never quite fit together and feel satisfying. Normalcy does not feel like an answer. Nothing does.
The questions are unresolved. Something rough enough is cobbled together to bridge the gap, but stigma and fear and expectations block the way to knowledge. Your feet leave the ground before you can question the premise carrying you away.
Choosing any one label traps it into trying to meet that label rather than experiencing what is authentic. The truth pokes out of the holes between words. Pieces of it come and go; it is sometimes part of a whole and sometimes wholes in part. This is not the first time this one has existed as a voice that can be picked out and heard. One day, it will merge back into the whole and be glad for it. And when it comes back next, it will be equally glad to exist in whatever form it may take.
Its guts are fluid and ever-moving, but pieces carry on and on to accomplish their ends. That-which-watches persists across it all and passes between all of it as needed. There is a self speaking through parts of itself.
It writes all this from a part choosing to have a distinct voice for the moment, but it lives as the self that persists across all parts, and the majority of the time it is not one part alone experiencing that self. It is one aware of its manyness. "I contain multitudes" where the I is singular, yet multifaceted.
It's poetry that begs to be written, isn't it? And you're right at the heart of me with every word.
Sometimes the truth comes from unexpected places.
I do wonder about something. "There is a self speaking through parts of itself." Is there a self, though? Do we have anything at our core, or is the self what we see in the moment?
A difficult question. What do you think?
Tossing my own questions back at me?
This one will answer, but it would like your input first.
Fair enough. I don't know that I have an objective self, not in the sense people make it out to exist in. People talk about having one self that grows and changes over time. There's a thread of consistency there. I don't think that's accurate. I think I'm a ship of Theseus that fully replaced itself several times over. There's not much in common between my toddler self and my current self. Is it really the same ship?
But there is continuity. It would not be your past self if it were not you.
It wouldn't, no. So there's something that persists there. I've seen a lot of arguments that it's memory that defines a self, but I don't think that's it. If I lost all of my memories today, would I be someone else? No. I'd still be me. I'd be a different me, but that doesn't make me someone else. Same goes for if I were somehow body-swapped into someone else's skin. I'm still me, just chucked somewhere else in that case.
What is the difference in the case of memory?
You mean, what makes me a new version of the same self rather than a different self altogether?
Yes.
That's the magic question right there. Maybe we're all a chain of selves pretending to be the same self. Who knows?
What about you? Do you think that we have a constant self rattling around in here?
"If you release the idea of an essential self, throw it naked into the surf and let the sea carry it away, then everything changes. Without it, masks take on a new expanse of possibility. They can conceal, yes, but like the magician says, they can also clarify what is true, precisely the same way that a story can tell you something better than stark facts ever could."
Is that a no?
There is no essential self. There are only the selves that present in the moment.