The only thing that stays completely the same since the day you’re born is your name. Every other aspect of who you are is constantly changing, growing and transforming. The day you die, the only thing that will have never changed will be your name.
This is the message my philosophy professor presented a few weeks ago in our Making Moral Decisions class. I disagreed with this theory immediately, stating that the size of one’s eyeballs never changes from the time of birth to the time of death.
I found upon later research that our eyeballs actually reach full size at the ripe age of three months. So, my initial argument was negated. I still wasn’t convinced of this “nothing stays the same” theory.
If this theory is true, then what is it that makes us who we are? How can I still be Janece if the only thing making me Janece is the title itself; the mere external label assigned to me before I even entered the world?
If only a name is fixed, and all else is a constantly changing set of variables, I am baffled. This seems highly superficial and unsatisfying in my mind. Think of it this way: if I am given a gift, let’s say a fully completed Lego model of the infamous Star Wars Millennium Falcon, but over the course of a three-month period I replace each and every Lego piece with a newer, shinier piece. At the end of the three-month period I will still call it my Lego Millennium Falcon, but will it in fact be the same gift? It no longer contains a single Lego piece from the original model; the only thing remaining the same is its name.
In contrast to this example, I present the human body. Our physical being seems to last a lifetime but in reality many cells die off and we generate newer cells to replace them. Biologically our bodies seem to follow the theory that nothing stays the same.
This brings me to my agreement of the opposing sides at hand. Both sides suggest that the constant changing is an inevitable process or cycle. This very cycle is what makes us uniquely human. I think the Lego model is indeed a completely different entity once all the pieces have been replaced, but I don’t think the same can be said for a human being.
We are not entities or objects like the Millennium Falcon Lego model, but rather we are a system of processes, a cyclical living being that must change in order to live.
The missing factor in my initial understanding was essence. Or rather it is the “how” and “why” to which those changes occur, and that is what makes us who we are. I may be completely different from the nine-pound infant that was born over 20 years ago, but it is my essence that has carried me from one change to the next. It is our essence that makes us who we are.
Janece Bell can be reached at
