“One and the same human being is, at various ages,
under various circumstances, a totally different human being.”
Solzhenitsyn: The
Gulag Archipelago
 |
| Only my wife hasn't changed. She is still the beautiful young woman I married. |
I am not a vain person. I rarely study myself in a mirror. My hair is curly so I never comb it – I just
wet my hands and run them through my hair when I splash water in my face each
morning after I wake up. I never trim my
beard or get a haircut until my wife complains that I am starting to look
shaggy. The few times I do look in a
mirror I see a stranger looking back.
It has occurred to me that I
am a totally different person – an incarnation of who I once was. I have the same DNA of that earlier person,
but there the likeness ends. I do not
look the same: my hair is silver, my ears are larger, my facial features are
different, I am less physically fit.
The difference doesn’t end there: I have totally different values,
different goals, different priorities, different likes and dislikes, and I am
smarter than that younger person.
I am in no way like my
younger incarnation.
the Ol'Buzzard
