"Semiotic individuation continues all through life, and the experience that many elderly persons have of being, in some strange sense, another person now than they were in their younger days is not wholly unfounded. We must reject the popular idea of identity as being connected to a particular biological entity or body, and learn to see identity rather as a temporary nodal point along a process that each of us is ceaselessly engaged in -- a process of identity formation and change that does not end until death. It is, in other words, not in the heritable endowment of genetic singularity that identity is to be found, but rather in the lifelong attempt to adjust our personal development to our own unique needs and experiences -- often in spite of the genetically caused defects we might have to overcome."
-- Jesper Hoffmeyer from Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Life of Signs and the Signs of Life (2009, Scranton University Press)
I'm not the man I used to be, and I never will be again. This is not to disparage any earlier form of me (though I do like to think this one is the smartest one); each one did more-or-less the best he could with what he knew and had (and each one, including the current one, had his flaws and short-comings). My thoughts, beliefs, and general outlook on life has over the years gone through some radical changes. I'm not the same person I was a mere 5 years ago, let alone the person I was in high school, or grade school.
Evolution, strictly speaking, applies to biological communities, species or genomes (or cell line descendancies). But the principle behind it, namely adaptation, applies more broadly, and its application to our own behaviors, beliefs, and learning is imperative for a holistically healthy life (as mental/psychological, emotional, and physical health are inextricably interwoven and interdependent). The inescapable fate of those who fail to meaningfully adapt is obsolescence.
The "me" you witness today is not, in whole or part, an essential construct, some Platonic whole that piggy-backs through time attached to this particular body, witnessing the events of my life without being affected by them. My soul, if any such thing exists, must evolve as surely as the rest of me does. It is not some fixed point in (or perhaps outside of) time and space, but rather an eddy in the stream of events that make up my life, prone to moving, changing, being temporarily or permanently disrupted, and eventually disappearing altogether or ceasing to be recognizable. It is no more the "true" me than is my body.
Even those familiar entities and places upon which we hang myriad meanings and conceptual contingencies can change in this manner. A few nights ago, I was thinking about my grandmother's house, and the fond memories I had of spending summers there. Her house was sold after her death. I have since learned that at some relatively recent point in the past it was occupied by people who let it fall into disrepair. It may well be that it is now in better hands, but it hit me that night that the place I knew simply doesn't exist anymore. The house, the physical address, is doubtless still there, but the home it signifies is just as doubtless foreign to me now. Most likely it was different even before that episode, shortly after it was sold. While the outside probably still contains some power to evoke nostalgia in me, it is doubtful that the inside ever would again to any substantial degree. The ghosts of meaning significant to me have been exorcised, detached from the house and now tethered only to my memories.
Sometimes adaptation is difficult, even painful. Sometimes it means letting go of people or places that have been dear to us, or accepting them in a new form that may be foreign, difficult to understand, or even objectionable to us. It is no less necessary for its difficulty, and we must afford to others the same latitude to adapt as life demands of us.
