All my life, I’ve been trying to work out who I am. Perhaps not surprisingly, I had my first existential crisis at age eight (or thereabouts) at my grandmother’s house in Boston. I don’t remember what precipitated it – a dream, perhaps – but I do recall bolting upright in bed, wondering why I was put on this earth, what the hell I was going to do with my life and how I would know which path was the right one.

Yeah, I was a real buzzkill. 

Over the years, I was drawn to philosophy, feeling quite at home, thank you very much, with weighty ideals and unanswerable questions. My age of enlightenment lasted nearly two decades, as I explored a range of social values and principles through work, study and just for fun (though I may have taken the scepticism ideal too much to heart). Decades later, reason is still underrated and more essential than we think, helping to demystify the unknown, highlight our shared humanity and bring us together. What most people lack is not reason, but the will to reason. In a content-driven digital world of aspiring influencers, everyone instantly wants answers without putting in the work.

Old self, new self

Recently, when working on a memoir that will probably never be finished, let alone published, I’ve gradually realised that my lifetime’s quest is a logical impossibility. I’ve been searching for myself – not the self reflected back to me by others, not my conscious (thinking) self, but my true self, assuming this self is singular and recognisable. But I’ve finally accepted that I’m changing in subtle, imperceptible ways every day. My childhood self, teenage angst-ridden self, and even the self that thought tweezing my eyebrows to near invisibility was a good idea are (thankfully) gone. So are my workaholic 20s-30s self, my first-time mother self and my menopause self (Good riddance to her). Thankfully, my creative self has stuck around.

I’m not good with finality, so rather than frame this process as a gradual erosion of my past self (maybe selves is more accurate), I prefer to think of myself as an existential chameleon. I may feel like I’m living a version of Groundhog Day, but I’m morphing into someone new on a metaphysical level. (Whether this new self is a better or worse version of the old one remains to be seen, as is the effect of the aging process on one’s self-awareness and self-esteem.) The kick: I can’t detect the subtle changes due to perception bias: I’m both the subject of this transformation and the object being transformed – a philosophical slapfight where neither ‘me’ can win. So why even try?

Philosophical conundrums

This inevitability of change shouldn’t be surprising. Heraclitus famously quipped: You cannot step into the same river twice. Renowned philosopher David Hume took it further by suggesting that the self is an illusion, a bundle of perceptions constantly in flux. It’s like a word jumble with the same letters, but they’re always rearranging, making new connections apparent but overall identification difficult. The upshot: When we spend too long looking for the ‘old me,’ we could miss the ‘new me’ standing before us. 

What’s the takeaway from this philosophical rollercoaster? Maybe the quest for self is more about acceptance than discovery. Perhaps the key is to stop searching for that childhood self who thought she was a secret agent with her own TV show and start appreciating the present-day self who knows how to balance family, business, creative pursuits, social life and wellbeing, or at least pretend to. 

So, goodbye to the old selves of decades past – thank you for helping me evolve into who I am today. Now, where are those tweezers?