Memory and Existence

We are not who we were, I don't mean that in a symbolic or a metaphorical sense, I mean it literally.  If you reject the idea of a soul, as I have, and accept that our sense of self and existence are as one with our physical bodies, that our mind and counchiness are made up of matter and not some kind of magical psychic ether then then you will inevitably arrive at the following conclusion.  We, me sitting writing this and you reading it, here in this moment, we do not have 80 or 90 years on this earth or even 40 or 50, I'm not sure how many we do have but I think its probably very few.

Think back a week, a month, a year; we change as much and as permanently as the landscapes of the earth, never to be the same again.  But the features that change are those same features that define our sense of self, our identity.  Regardless of who you are or what standard you use to measure yourself and your identity; whether it be morality, knowledge, your way of thinking or viewing the world, your physical attributes such as strength or beauty; it matters not, there is not a single feature within us that is immune to change. We are as ever changing as the currents of the oceans or the floor of a forest.

Less poetically our cells die, not all at once but a few at a time, just like our ideas and opinions, replaced with new ones over time; give it a month or a year or a decade.  However or wherever you decide to draw the line between what is you here and now, reading this, and the person who will come to exist in your stead, this you, the person reading this, will die.  Not suddenly, but slowly, eroded away by time, like a mountain in the wind.  To be replaced by a new landscape, a new existence to replace the old.  This new person will inherit some of your memories, but not all, they will take from you some ideas and morals, but not all, they will have some of the same cells in their body, but most will be different.  They will not be you, not mentally, not physically, not morally.  You will be dead.  The identity we perceive as "us" is not a single being that exists in autonomy but a gradient of new consciousness and death.  So enjoy this moment as you sit and read this, look around and experience this existence, this moment.  Because it is the only moment that this particular "you" can exist in.