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Anyone else experience the feelings that you are constantly dying? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by BalabakGuy@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I don't know how to express or articulate my thoughts and my vocabulary and grammar gets messed up the more I write so I will just write simply.

What I'm trying to say is that every day or hour or minute or everytime you think, you feels like your original selves is dying. I know that we are constantly growing but i just can't stop thinking that whenever we grow or learning new things or start to think differently, our past selves is dead. I think back to my past selves in middle school, highschool and from 2022 and think, aren't they dead? No matter what i do or think or whatever happens to me, i can't bring back the personalities or "me"s from the past. They remain dead and continue to being dead. Unless they are exist in another timeline or universe.

What exactly is identity, consciousness or the self which is me? I don't know nor understand but this idea just stuck in my mind and occasionally appears when I'm bored, stressed or relaxed.

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[–] rtfm_modular@lemmy.world 51 points 10 months ago

Your body and mind is just a bag of chemical soup, undergoing a constant reaction. Your tangle of nerves and synapses feed a mess of neurons that are wired in a circuit that gives you that spark of consciousness. But none of this is a fixed system, and your body goes through constant change. As one neural pathway dies, another one is rewired and the circuitry is now different.

You can play the game of debating the Ship of Theseus, but who you “are” or “were” is just an illusion. Our memories are just the old circuits powering up, but even those change over time. Your memories are a false representation of the past because they only ever exist in the present and you’re at the mercy of your own perceptions.

You “are” until you are not. So do what feels good —Kiss your loved ones, hug a tree, and be kind to yourself and others while your bag of soup ain’t leaking.