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?