Tal Bachman: Selves in the Balance

Steyn On-Line ^ | May 7, 2023 | Tal Bachman

[Twotone]

When did you first feel like you?

Go back in time, right now, to your earliest memories. What do you see?

There they are again, those images. Hazy, blurry, but still there. They are lodged forever within you, retrievable at will. You can see a particular room, maybe with your father or mother there with you. Or an outdoor scene. Or traveling somewhere. You can see the colors, recall the textures, maybe even remember a certain smell. You can see yourself there—at least, you can see that scene, even now, through the portal of who you were at that time. You can do more than see. To some extent, you can relive, re-experience it, emotionally, psychologically, as you were then.

The interesting thing is that as you re-experience the past as you were then, you still feel like you. You were young then—maybe only two or three. You lacked experience and knowledge. You were much smaller than you are now. You hadn't even been walking long. You couldn't read or write, and still struggled to speak and understand.

Yet there was, even then, something unique it felt like to be you. And it is still within you. Through all you've experienced since—all the victories and defeats, all the adventures and loves and losses and years and decades—there remains something enduring and fundamental about what it is to be you. That deepest depth of who you are can never be extinguished.

But to say there has always been something, and always will be something, that it is to be you or me isn't to say that our sense of self has never faced obstacles, or weakened, or adapted. We don't exist in vacuums. And we're all born with an ability and instinct to adapt to environment.

[Terry L Smith]

a 4 y.o. boy standing in front of a steam locomotive in the Chicago railroad terminal. Earlier, transversing the American southwest desert on a shiiny metal train.
Second year in elementary school, on the city bus with mom, reading a man’s copy of the New York Times.