When do we stop being ourselves?

Here’s a thought. I am a product of all the people I have met so far. Every person I have ever conversed with, dwells in me. But they are products of a gazillion other people, too. Are we all different permutations and combinations of maybe just a thousand odd people who first lived?

Our speech, our opinions, our words reflect our life experiences. Experiences that have shaped us. Memories, good, bad, insecurities, victories, rejections, success.

A Conversation is an act of trade. A sacred one actually. A give and take that gets engraved in our minds, in time, and transcends our imagination. Reaching the farthest of geopolitical areas. Places that might be ruled by democratic governments, or dictators.

We go around telling stories of not only ourselves, but also those who have left a part of them with us. There is this Urdu couplet that roughly translates to. All my stories are your stories. I have no stories of my own to tell.

At one point, we are not really our true self. Its like the ship of Theseus. For anyone who has not heard of the ship of Theseus let me elaborate. It is a very interesting thought experiment from ancient Greece. It is supposed that the famous ship sailed by the hero Theseus in a great battle was kept in a harbor as a museum piece, and as the years went by some of the wooden parts began to rot and were replaced by new ones; then, after a century or so, every part had been replaced. The question then is whether the "restored" ship is still the same object as the original.

Replace the ship with ourselves here. Are we always our true selves? Or at some point do we stop being ourselves? When all our original parts are replaced?

It also makes me think of mortality. How do you define death? Is death in context of the body? The body dies, but the person lives. Through their friends, children of friends. For a bit of me I leave with you, a bit of you stays with me, and also a bit of you probably dies with me.

Do I die? Or does the unique permutation of all the people that have ever dwelled inside die? Is it the death of all those people, too? Wait, did they exist in the first place though? I am not really sure. And I don’t really care, I am not restless. For I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned .

Yours,

Frodo Mercury

Lord of the strings