Signs Of Change

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I was reading this book on the current state of neuroscience and the guy was presenting the brain as essentially this modular grab-bag of different systems- this one for this skillset, another for that one, yet another. Dozens of them. And what makes you "you" in your brilliant specificity is not so much the modules as how they interact, how they interface with each other.

"You" is very plastic. "You" changes through time. But you have this more rigid sense of self.

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Anyways, I was thinking about this in reference to this similar feeling I've had recently since I changed jobs. I work with all different people, in a different building and a different office and, really, it's been a big change. And yet, I still feel like "me." But so much has changed. I'm changed. And it's the same thing when you move to a different house, or get a divorce, or retire, or get fired, or go to jail, whatever. Everything is different and that has to make you different, too.

But you hardly notice.

You hardly notice your own self, obsessed as you are with it.

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I think all the time about different things. What does this mean? How about that? How does it fit in with this other idea over here? Why do I do this thing and not that thing? What if I did? Is there any peanut butter left?

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Look, I gotta go to work. There might be some more little people running around, need to get rounded up.


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