I was thinking about the "self" or an essential self that remains constant through the journey of life. As in I am not the person I was even five years ago in terms of my thinking, worldview etc. and I am not the person I was ten years ago either. And if someone from earlier times who knew me met me it's as if they don’t "know" me at all because I am not the same person I was then. Everyone goes through a process of change but the pace of it might be quite different. For instance, when I visit my hometown in Mangalore every few years it strikes me how little people have grown or changed. It's almost as if I see the change in me reflected in the static nature of people around me. I can't relate to them in the same way as I did as a much younger person because where my worldview has changed dramatically, theirs appears to have shifted minimally.

This makes me wonder if there is an essential I or a self that doesn't change at all through everything. Because even though I am no longer the person I was or even though my worldview has undergone major disruption, I am not a new person with no trace of the former self either. There must be something solid or substantial that is underneath to which all of these changes refer back to? An essential entity or substance that remains constant, that sort of determines how these changes will be absorbed, digested or spitted out? That does the work of selecting what knowledge or experience moulds it or doesn’t in one way or another even though it might not be consciously?

An onion springs to mind as an analogy. If you peel an onion layer by layer, is it still an onion? Is it the same onion?

These days I feel overwhelmed with sadness at odd moments. On a day-to-day level nothing much has changed for me but unlike people who can go back to normal when restrictions are lifted and so on, the normality or the things I'd like to do seem far out of my grasp. Travelling, seeing family, doing the mundane things I did back in India just one more time... the other night a wave of nostalgia hit me when a sudden picture of me with my mom and sister strolling around in a mall we visited frequently then flashed before my eyes. Out of nowhere. And it made my eyes well up with the thought of whether we'll ever have that moment again. Just going to the mall and then coming back home in the rickshaw and then watching some random TV, having dinner. Very mundane things but the arc of all our lives now with Covid in the background is, as the Shakespearean phrase goes, all out of joint. I yearn for those mundane moments maybe because in their very out-of-reachness they are exciting and endearing. But that's simply me losing a sense of perspective in one of my down phases I guess. The hopeful me wants to believe that the world will soon return to its natural rhythm. And I might not have those exact same moments again... as Heraclitus said no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man... but as different people I hope we will be able to meet and make new memorable moments again soon...

I have found a way to trick my brain into going for a walk :) Or maybe I should say tricked it into not building up a mountain of resistance to the idea. I have a tendency to plan pretty much everything wayyy ahead of time... there is not a single spontaneous bone in my body... hehe! So usually at the time of waking up, which is generally late because I am a late sleeper, I start thinking about my day's routines and that immediately makes me come up with excuses against a walk from too much work to feeling not quite up to it. For the past two weeks I have tried this idea of "not thinking" about the walk consciously and instead just following through with it as part of my routine. What this means is I don't get to build up resistance to the idea when I am most resistant to it, which is just when I am up, and because it's routinised my body just goes through the motions unconsciously. My conscious brain is not involved much and surprisingly it doesn't mind :) The thing is I actually enjoy the walk itself... it's the decision-making and actually getting out of the house where things get held up. I am trying to make the walk something of a solid routine like brushing the teeth... because I feel the softer the routine the easier it'll be to break it.

Today evening it struck me to apply this insight to another area of activity where conscious resistance makes things hard for me. For instance, I am feeling quite overwhelmed about this piece of writing I have to do. The whole thing seems like a mountain the more I think about it and the more I think about it, the more daunting the idea of scaling it gets. I can't but help think about the height of the mountain in the distance and get anxious just looking at it. I am working around this by telling myself to just focus on the bit I have to do each day as part of my routine and not think of the whole entire thing. If every day I make it through the little bit or section I am bound to reach the end. Instead of looking far into the future when the whole is done I am going to simply do what needs to be done every day as part of my routine. Not consciously think about it or resist it. Let's see how I get on ;)

I believe that you are born with a certain nature, or in philosophical terms, I believe essence precedes existence rather than the other way round as existentialists claim. And that nature predetermines a sort of destiny. If someone were to ask me why I "chose" a particular path or made a certain life decision, I would not know what to say to them. I am rendered quite dumb when people ask questions they have no business to precisely because they aren't close enough to me to reveal my thought processes and if I give a conventional bland answer—which I am forced to—I am forced into being inauthentic. But to return to the main point, while it might seem to myself as well as to the world that I chose something, and in a way I did too, the range of choice is predetermined to a large extent. I cannot but be true to who I am and this tenacity to be true to who I am was also sort of given to me. I did not choose it… the choice was made for me.

This is why I am far more reconciled to my "choices" now than when I was younger; then I felt a sort of rebellion against my own choices or against the world for denying me choices. When it seemed as if I was "making choices" very intentionally among an (apparent) world of possibilities every choice seemed like an immense responsibility, especially if it wasn't a conventional "choice". The more I have come to appreciate how many of my choices were not choices at all in any actual sense, the more the burden of these choices has lightened for me… I feel a sort of peace because if I was given such a nature then it was given to fulfil that nature and if the fulfilment of that nature demands certain choices as opposed to others, then I am simply following my own path.