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We are constantly growing and changing.
The person I was 10 years ago is not the person i am today. I have memories of that person, but it's not me, now. My consciousness has changed, evolved. My body has changed, I have hair in places..... wait, thats something else.

I had a friend who also happened to be my optomitrist. He was a real petrol head, he lived to drive fast. I knew him when he had a VW golf (Rabbit to the americans). Then went to an Audi A3, then the A3 quattro. Then he bought a Nobel as track car. Eventually he was driving a Porshe GT3. We lost touch and i hadn't seen him for a few years.
Then last year my biokineticist mentioned his name and i asked how he was doing. Turns out he was in a hectic motorcycle accident. Got T-boned by a car and is now literally a vegetable. Can't talk, or move, barely registers awareness. So the question is: is it possible the old person I knew is somewhere inside the new vegetable?

I know that i am not the same person today that i was last year, or even yesterday, so if everything i am is only here, in the present, and if that person gets damaged to the point it becomes a vegetable, then i think that is what i will be. The past is gone. there is only the present, what and who you are here and now.

sad, scary, unsettling.... sounds awfully like an uncomfortable truth.

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ceytin
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"Learn to accept, even welcome pain - for if you do not fear pain... if the thought of physical, emotional or spiritual anguish cannot dissuade you from the true path - then no enemy, however strong, can defeat you...no struggle, however long, can deter you...nor circumstance, however wrong, can keep you from your destiny."

In many aspects one remains the same over considerable periods of time, but evolving tastes, for instance, are a sign that the "you" that recalls childhood events and feelings is still a different "you". Memory is a funny component in this: consider that for a period of about two and a half years I simply could not spontaneously bring the name "Otis Redding" to mind, or even through some deliberation. I could play his songs in my head, visualize footage I had seen if performances, such as at Monterey in 1967 or on TV, but damned if I could muster the name at the same time - that would come minutes, hours, or even days later. In fact, I have of late had incidents like that in relation to football (soccer) commentators, the latest being David Pleat, whose voice, idiom, and even face I could recall in a conversation on Sunday, yet the name only came to my conscious mind about 30 minutes ago. This is a more substantial matter than one might think, because in some significant measure we are also who we are in relation to others and our experiences. Consider those who are on the downward slide of Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia; I have a buddy whose father, whom I have known since my teen-years, suffered a series of series of mild strokes just over a decade ago, and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's for just over five years now. This person is not self -aware sufficiently to remember that he is no longer legally allowed to drive; he often is not clear on what town he lives in; he has become rude and abusive of his adult daughters, and his wife, which is utterly behavior uncharacteristic of the person we all knew, and of which he is often not himself aware. It sometimes takes firm and sharp words from my buddy, his son, to bring him around a bit to more the person we knew, and for him to feel and be aware of the person we have known him to be. Thus, one may ask not whether he is "in there", but also how much of "him" is "in there", and how much a new person. You are who you is, but to function socially how much of "you" is enough?

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Ebet labour ne zizoner un den.

For once we were gods, so shall we be again!