WHO AM I?
I have always felt that I was me. I felt that I was me when I was seven years old and I feel like I am me now. The way I have felt about myself hasn’t changed. I am the same person.
But here is a photograph of me at the age of seven or so dressed up in my patriotic sailor suit near the end of World War II.
And this if a photograph of me ten minutes ago. There is no resemblance between the two me’s except that my ears still stick out. And we, my two me’s, are different in every other way as well.
So what makes me think that each of these people is me? When I shock myself by looking in the mirror at myself as an 85 year old what I see doesn’t look like me at all. Where did the hair go and where did the white beard come from, how did I become so ancient looking? When I think of “me” I think of myself as being 45 (until I try to stand up). How did I become a 45 year old who looks like a dumpy old man? I don’t feel like my 7 year old me but I don’t feel like my 85 year old me, either.
I’m not alone in this. I’ve read a number of articles on Apple News that puzzle out why we think of ourselves as being much younger than are. But right now I’ll drop that. I am just trying to figure out how I can be so many “me’s” at different ages and yet think of them all as being me.
Not only do I look different at different stages in my life, but what concerns me is very different at different stages in my life. Now that I am in maybe the second last stage of life, a 45 year old living alone in an 85 year old body, still thinking I can wander the world as 45 year olds do, and have lived through a number of stages I am aware of these different stages. The stage I haven’t gotten to yet is the long term care comatose stage or the suddenly dying in Paris while eating a croissant stage, I don’t which, it is time of great uncertainty. But the stage I am in right now, the suddenly free to do whatever I like stage and explore the world stage, a kind of second childhood with no responsibilities is one in which I am having a great time in and don’t want to leave.
I’ll leave for another day an attempt to figure out the different stages, including the entwined domestic and family stage that I have lived in most of my life. But even as I say “I” will leave this for another day, “I” still am not quite sure who “I” am now or at any other time and these photographs don’t help.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 