Time to Reflect and Repair

Post date: May 27, 2010 4:10:55 PM

5-27 (written 5-25)

A foreign land inspires a foreign self. We believe we are constant personalities with structured identities that will last through eternity, but this belief is now questioned by me. It appears to me that so much of one's identity consists of the possessions, climate, people, buildings, media, and culture of one's surroundings. Remove one entirely from one's habituated environment, one's job, friends, family, home, and ways of living, and the remnants of the self are less easily located and identified. It is as if the self is not spontaneously birthed, but triggered by the environment one has chosen to live in, or the environment one simply does not leave behind. The self is not a permanent, self-contained entity, but a construct, a conglomeration of multiple variables and conditions.

I say this because in Actopan I am empty until I recall my attachments. Here I am, living, without purpose save my biological drives and my previously conjured goals. Who am I? I am my family, my friends, my jobs, my previous actions, my motorcycle and gear, and my body. Time has stopped.

I do wonder if this is a symptom of some "post-concussion-syndrome."

How does one distinguish between the self and the life of the self? A metaphysical question too convoluted to dissect here, but it may be said that the self is a set of motivations and perceptual filters, and that the life of the self is the set of consequences of those motivations and perceptions. Here in Actopan, I feel like I am in between lives. This feels uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar, but I am also experiencing a profound tranquility. I am satisfying perhaps the greatest urge of my life. This is the relief after the scratch. It was a long, long time before I grew the arms to reach this itch!