[4803] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: losing yourself
jcb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jcb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Jul 12 12:22:17 1995
Here's my hypothesis about this:
The effects of events on your "self" seems to be weighted by the inverse
log of the time since the events occurred. Those that continue to
affect your "self" are not necessarily memories which had a huge impact
at the time, but those which caused changes in your self which have
continued to affect your self right up to the present time.
If an event stops having its present effect on you, the event's effects
gradually fade from your self, being replaced by the effects of more
recent events.
Applying the above to your posting, it suggests to me that that you're
sad to lose certain parts of yourself because they no longer are
important enough to you to affect you *right now*. This is why I try to
continually do as many as I can of the things that have the effects on
me that I want to keep as part of myself.
One of the *really* frustrating things for me is that there are
activities relating to a few of those parts I can't just go out and do
any more because the effects of age are just beginning to show, so it
takes a little effort and planning to keep some of those things current.
And it will only ever get worse...
