I am Me when I was Me, but am I still Me now that I'm Me?

United States
October 12, 2015 9:43am CST
The music was loud, the crowd was drinking heavily, and I was having a conversation- yelling a conversation, actually, since the music was too loud to speak normally. My wife and I attended her 20th High School reunion this weekend. It was a pretty awesome night as I got to mingle with remnants from my wife's past and explore the lives of all these strangers who had knowledge of her before we were "Us"... When she was just "She." One conversation that stuck with me was a guy named Matt who was munching away on some mini tacos and talking about his position at Johnson Control (Controls?). He spoke of how everyone had seemed so different so many years later. Of course, aging 20 years will change the look of people (well, most people, there are those weirdos out there that never seem to age a day), but I jumped on this topic to wax philosophical, asking, "Yeah, but do we really change?" I went on to explain that we most certainly grow with experience and develop more wisdom with age so we are not as likely to repeat past mistakes (although, many people do anyway), but is this actually "changing" or is this just taking our intrinsic self and adding onto that self, building fresh layers over old foundations? Do we demolish the house completely and build a new one or do we simply keep adding new rooms to the house, thus expanding the furnishings of our mind and tempering our styles and perceptions with ever growing knowledge, preference, worldliness. Deep down, am I the same person that I was in high school? In elementary school, in my mother's arms... Or am I a completely new being, completely alien from those past forms? Well, he didn't seem to have a response to this and I moved the conversation to some lighter subjects and then ended it soon after, moving on to many other fun interactions, but I figured it was worthy enough a topic to post here to see if any of you wished to take a stab at it. It was a great night. We both drank too much, danced too little, and laughed just the right amount. Maybe in 10 years we'll do it again.
1 response
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
13 Oct 15
I suppose you have answered your own question - you change in some ways but not in others, and I don't just mean physically. I don't think I have changed a great deal in terms of my sense of humour - I am still amused by the same things that I laughed at when I was a kid at school, although I have probably added a bit of sophistication to that over the years! Politically I am still attracted to the same sorts of cause that excited me as a student - I have never voted for a Conservative in my entire life, and have no intention of so doing. However, my religious views have changed a lot as i have fallen out of love with organised religion. I would also like to think that i have become more tolerant and less likely to fly off the handle if someone annoys me. But am i still the same person that I was when at school? For one thing, I spent my last years at school being fascinated by literature, history and geography - and I still am!
1 person likes this
• United States
13 Oct 15
Yeah, I think we're both pretty much on the same page in our thinking. I'm curious to see if my perspective on this subject changes in the future. They say that you become more conservative as you age, but I wonder if that is just a saying or if the "conservative" in the saying is just a general catch-all term to mean less wild or thoughtless of the consequences from our actions. I find myself to be far more mindful of the repercussions of my decisions these days than I remember being when I was younger. So, I guess you could say I'm more conservative, but I feel that I still take risks from time to time... I just weigh the risks more carefully before taking them. I don't think risky behavior is exclusive to youth, but likely more prevalent. Thanks for the thoughtful comments, John.