SelfleS

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHSAD;FLKJAS;LDKFJLAS;DKJFASL
....
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OK. good.
You should know that I'm drinking a generously poured glass of red wine right now. And that I was the one who poured it. And that I probably got the idea from some conglomeration of classic films in which the protagonist, feeling angsty but looking GREAT, pours her heart out online (or on paper, era-dependent) . And that my father just burst on the scene and although he had the best of intentions, it frustrated me because I had already grown so attached to my carefully calculated contemplative atmosphere (can't find a 'c' word for atmosphere...) And that he just held the puppy atop my head as she licked my ears. Do they not understand the artistic process?

Transitions are a funny thing.
I realize that is an incredibly vague statement. Substantiation can be made available upon request, I just don't feel like it right now
Even funnier is the fact that we spend "our" whole lives with (as?) ourselves and yet it is still virtually impossible to predict how we're going to react to any given change. Throw menstruation into the mix and it's a complete crapshoot. Speaking of which, I think it would be really romantic- in terms of my relationship with the universe- if the lunar cycle and my own were completely in tune, and I always got my period on a full moon. 


But I think for me, at the moment, it is funniest of all when we assume we have a Self* at all. This statement I will happily substantiate although it is certainly not an original thought of my own, but merely one I have been flirting with for the past little while- depending on the phase of the moon of course.
*by Self, I am referring to some essential, intrinsic, independent, identity. something that is not subject to change.

To be clear, I don't think it's funny when one considers the existence of the Self seriously and ultimately concludes that there is in fact a fundamentally unchanging element to his or her being. I only think it's funny when such a colossal statement is simply accepted as a given. Or when one's decision on the matter, in either direction, is attributed with the status of absolutes.

As far as I know, the engagement of humans with their universes is necessarily dynamic, and our existence is in a constant state of evolution (I don't mean that evaluatively). On the behavioral level, we are interactive social beings. We exchange ideas, enter and exit and try to exit relationships, and conform and resist and challenge and accept. We adapt to our environments, we establish order and we form attachments. We change. Granted, some seem to more than others.
On the cellular level too, things are always changing within us, for better or for worse. We metabolize we metastasize, we mutate, we amputate and we vaccinate. Every single cell in the body is eventually renewed over a span of seven years, at least that's what I heard on Grey's Anatomy. Whatever, you get the gist.

There is a Buddhist parable that tells of a chariot. The wheels are changed, one at a time. Several planks of wood that make up its floor are replaced, and it is repainted. Some time passes, and the seats are redone. At what point in this process of change does it become a new chariot, and how many times? What is it that could possibly serve as the determining factor for establishing the discrete quanta of different chariots? Like the chariot, we too are always changing, but I bet you spotted that parallel being drawn from a mile away. Certainly some things for some people change more quickly, dramatically, and irreversibly than other things for other people. But we are all always changing.

My senses seem to indicate that permanence is an illusion. I suppose my sensory perception is an illusion too, considering the subjective nature of my experience and my inability to see the old woman in that optical trick, so I'm not really sure where that leaves me....

The point is that (perhaps) implicit to our incessant attempts to predict is a belief that our 'self' is a constant, and therefore a phenomenon we can understand and maybe even control.
My own experience with the myriad of transitions that surround graduating university (including but not limited to switching cities, moving back in with my parents and leaving a lifelong structure of quantified excellency) is that my "self" exists only in a constant state of flux, that I am always changing, and that I can in fact be quite unpredictable even to myself.
Lately, I've often perceived my behavior as erratic, but maybe that's because my assumptions of how I will react are based on a simplistic understanding of who I am, or even of who I was last week or last year.  Needless to say, this can be a bit disconcerting.
My discomfort with the discrepancy between expectations of myself and the reality of my behavior are fundamentally rooted in an attempt to crystallize who I am, and thereby predict my behavior. I think.
Far more comfortable, it seems, would be to make peace with the impermanence of all things- MYSELF INCLUDED- even though that would seriously mess with my superior knack for gross self absorption (hence this blog... how about if I shut it down you'll know I've finally gotten over myself)
It would be just wonderful to go with the flow of my emotions, dance with them (mental image of cotton eye joe) and stop being so exhaustingly determined to understand myself and what I am likely to do next. Because to understand ourselves is to collapse the wavefunction into a snapshot. And even if I do manage to get a good look at one image it would quickly become outdated. Sometimes I wish I was "my" puppy. She literally frolics around chasing after dandelion fluff floating in the air, and scratches her own back for hours.

But wait, because here's the thing.
If on a holistic level we are constantly changing, then what is it that makes us who we are, how do we come to know ourselves, and what are the implications for our relationships?
Please refer back to the first three lines of this entry, for my thoughts on that matter.