WE ARE THE SHIP OF THESEUS

Fostered by a lethal combination of worries about the upcoming week and replaying my top-10 worst moments from the weekend, Sunday has become the day for my weekly identity crisis. 

Last Sunday was a particularly bad existential crisis. So much so, that I woke up Monday morning and decided to craft a list of conflicting and concerning personality traits I felt I had recently developed.

As I went to ignore the lecture and begin to compose my list, my philosophy professor gave directions that snapped me out of my distraction—“Make a list of things that are so essential to your identity that if you lost them you wouldn’t be the same person.”

Confirming my belief that my professor is some sort of oracle, he gave me the instructions I needed to reground myself. The only problem was that I couldn’t think of anything necessary to my identity.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of my classmates also had trouble answering his question. Is there really anything that would make you not yourself?

Class naturally took a philosophical turn, concluding that if we had somehow lost all our memories, we may be transformed into a new individual, but I still struggled with the question.

A concept known as “The Ship of Theseus” was briefly floated at the beginning of the class, and I find myself returning to it. This thought experiment theorizes a wooden boat whose parts are slowly replaced with metal parts, begging the question if the ship is still the same if it has been completely rejuvenated.

Much of my Sunday crises are fueled by the comparison of my current self to my past self. Obviously, it’s college, and people are going to change, but I was not prepared for the rapid changes to my personality and moral code that I would endure once stepping onto campus.

Since when did I start calling people “babe” unironically or feel at ease when forced to engage in discussion in class?

I find myself trying to convince people that I am neither fun nor spontaneous five minutes after I cartwheeled down the street or saying no to something that I enjoy but would have previously stressed me out. 

I can see that my wooden parts are slowly being replaced with metal, or at the very least I struggle to accept that they have changed.

I love these new metal parts, but they don’t quite feel right, at least not yet. This is where my main worries lie—do I like who I am becoming?

As an uptight, shy girl, I had always wished to be more fun and outgoing. Now that I am on the way to becoming her, I feel out of place. If there was one thing that made me myself, it was my shyness. My one defining trait.

I can feel my shyness and the wooden pieces surrounding it morphing into metal, and it scares me. It’s scary to gain new personality traits, to say something and think “Would I really say that?” 

I feel like I’m playing a part, and not very well! I miss my wooden pieces. They were sturdy and reliable. These new metal pieces are unpredictable and unnatural. 

While the ship’s wooden pieces may seem castoff and the metal pieces favorable, both are important. Even though some of the original parts are gone, the ship is still molded by its wooden pieces, shaping the way for new and improved features. The ship is evolving, but it remains the same at its core.

• college
• identity
• identity crisis
• mental health