In Twenty-Four Hours

By this time tomor­row, you will be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent per­son. You will prob­a­bly not notice the sub­tle changes, but they will hap­pen no mat­ter what you do. There is an entire sci­ence ded­i­cated to ask­ing the ques­tion: “Why do we think we are still the same per­son over the decades of change?” We all feel like there is con­ti­nu­ity to our­selves — that as adults we are essen­tially the same as when we were small chil­dren. For rea­sons we can­not seem to prove, we think that our mem­o­ries are solid. In other words, it may be that our sense of same­ness is mostly an illu­sion.
No doubt, we have some bio­log­i­cally directed tem­pera­ment traits that stay with us, but are we the same essen­tial per­son? Can we make con­scious changes all along the way toward some sort of per­fec­tion? These ques­tions and oth­ers like them haunt us a bit. It is even more dif­fi­cult to be part of an objec­tive study about it. After all, no one doing the research stays exactly the same either. How­ever slight or sub­tle, change is uni­ver­sal and con­tin­ual. That old oak tree grew a lit­tle bit today. Its aging limbs droop slightly more, if only by a micron.
How is it that we do not feel our age? Sixty-something peo­ple tell me they feel thirty. Is there a time­less some­thing inside of us all that watches our bod­ies age? Does the body affect the soul? The ques­tions con­tinue with no absolute answers — at least not yet any­way. What if Jesus had lived to be ninety?
Infor­ma­tion seems to changes us most. Life events have an impact too. Birth, death, mar­riage, divorce, dis­ease, acci­dents, edu­ca­tion, loss, suc­cess, fail­ure — all go into the mix directly or indi­rectly. At the same time, there seems to be a gap between the plea­sures and pit­falls of life and that strange some­thing inside that seems to watch it all so calmly. I won­der what it is learn­ing. Even more, I won­der why it is all happening.