The Composite Human

I’ve been reading and thinking about the self lately.

In Alan Watts’s lecture, “We As Organism,” he talks about how our identities are not fixed, that our bodies are trillions of ever-moving atoms like the dancing tips of a flame, and thus we can have no definite shape; we cannot truly be defined as a singular shape or thing.

Then I saw an article by Big Think about how neuroscientists are beginning to agree with Eastern philosophers, that there is no such thing as a self, but rather we are the culmination of the various background thoughts we repeat to ourselves.

For me, I want to have a basis. A self I can reliably tell myself about or explain to others. A range of traits that stay relatively consistent. As I’ve written before, we never stop changing, but perhaps with focused repetition, I can torque my range of habits to a self that’s a semi-square or a semi-rectangle, but always positive and recognizable.

I love jogging, and I jog at different times for different reasons, and sometimes I’m lazy, and sometimes I’m busy and don’t want to jog, but if I do it often and do it anyway, well, that’s definitely a consistent thing I can define myself with.

~~ This post was inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge ~~