I wanted to improve myself, I wanted to make some changes, and all of this, simply because I wanted to be happier and more satisfied with myself. Now that some changes have been made, I notice that I’m starting to like things that don’t belong to the tastes of my old self. Yet, today I found this quote in a video essay about Blade Runner 2049:
“The self is not physical, it’s symbolic. It is “in” the body but it is rarely completely integrated with the body. A person is where he believes himself to be; or, more technically, the body is an object in the field of the self. It is one of the things we inhabit.”
It is a quote from Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.
The self is symbolic, it is something that each of us builds and nurtures with meaning, moment after moment. If I change my patterns of behavior, my usual self feels lost.
It’s a very beautiful quote! I have had a similar experience since making some fundamental changes. I just don’t feel comfortable with some aspects of my old self and life anymore. It somehow just does not feel right anymore, like I‘ve shed a layer that wasn’t mine to begin with. Strange, isn‘t it?
I suppose we find it strange because in the building of our self we convince ourselves that it is unchangeable. We make it anew every day but in our construction of it, we put also the idea of its immutability.
To me, it is a paradox similar to the one present in The Neverending Story: when something suddenly comes true from one of Bastian’s wishes, in the world of Fantastica it’s something old, something that had always existed.
Reblogged this on SHIFT2Drive.blog.