My father once told me he barely recognised the person he was at twenty-five. Not in a proud, look-how-far-I’ve-come way. More like describing a stranger he’d once shared a flat with.
We talk about personal growth as if it’s addition. As if we simply accumulate wisdom, experience, maturity on top of who we fundamentally are. But that’s not quite right, is it? Sometimes growth is subtraction. Sometimes it’s demolition.
There’s a ship in Athens they’ve been repairing for thousands of years. The Ship of Theseus. Every plank, every sail, every rope eventually gets replaced. Philosophers have argued for centuries: is it still the same ship?
You are not the same person you were ten years ago. Not metaphorically. Literally. Most of your cells have been replaced. Your memories have been reconsolidated, subtly altered each time you’ve recalled them. The person you were has been slowly dismantled, one imperceptible piece at a time.
I think about this when I look at old photos. The boy in those images had different fears, different certainties, different ideas about what mattered. He wouldn’t understand most of the choices I make now. And I can barely remember why the things he cared about seemed so urgent.
The Buddhists have a term for this: anatta, or non-self. The idea that there is no fixed, unchanging core to who we are. We’re more like rivers than stones. The same river never flows twice, Heraclitus said, because it’s constantly different water.
This should be terrifying. And sometimes it is. Who will I be in another decade? Will I recognise that person? Will they approve of who I am now?
But there’s something liberating in it too. You are not condemned to remain who you’ve been. The story isn’t finished. The ship can be rebuilt, plank by plank, into something seaworthy again.
Last month I ran into someone I knew fifteen years ago. “You’ve changed,” she said. Not as criticism, just observation. I wanted to say: I’ve changed a hundred times since you knew me. I’m a completely different ship now, sailing in waters the old vessel never imagined.
We are all slowly becoming unrecognisable to our former selves. Perhaps the question isn’t whether we stay the same, but whether we’re changing in directions we can live with.