I change all the time, there is no doubt about it. Which forces me to conclude that personalities are unquestionably liquid. I fundamentally change and become someone else, so seamlessly I hardly notice it. Only by writing down my thoughts – which I try to do every day – can I begin to grasp the change. Ever so often, I find myself reading in my journal – almost in shock – that not too long ago, I thought those very thoughts. To me there seems to be now causality here, no red thread, no constant progression in one direction – just change. Dreams and plans so carefully and meticulously hatched by a previous me – becoming more and more irrelevant and obsolete each passing minute. In time, leaving only behind the sour taste of unfulfillment – but sadly, of dreams I no longer wish would come true. I think this is the irony of humans – whom so often spend an entire life discarding old dreams by hatching new ones – one more unfulfilled than the other. Humans – Camus once said – is the only species that spends the first half of its life, longing for the glorious future – and the other half bitterly nostalgic of the past.

 

I think most people have ambitions for a brighter future, where one eventually will find “one’s true self”. I believe this essentialist thinking – the notion of a true one, that is simply just hindered by circumstance from taking shape – is very dangerous. It fails to grasp the liquidity of our personalities. I’d say that bad ambitions aren’t the problem, but ambition itself. Of course, if you dilute and break down the word ambition – it could have some linguistic applicability. For example, when used in a sort of non-ambitious way like: “My ambition is to do nothing today” or “I am very ambitious in my pursuit of the lazy life”. In this way, the word in itself isn’t very problematic. It is how the word is used today – the sentiment it implies – that bothers me. When someone for example says, “He is very ambitious” – one would of course assume they’re implying he is ambitious in his pursuit of status or career.

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Ambition, used as such – and here also ignoring the aspect of existential vanity – is problematic when considering the liquidity of personality. It’s madness to set such long-term career plans – when it is impossible to know who one is going to become. Think about it, you’d never let a younger and less experienced person choose how you should spend your day today. Having 20-year-old me come back to haunt me – dictating my present day. What horrors! I’d never allow that selfish prick to dictate my life. Well setting grand plans for future selves – and following them – is the equivalent of having your past-self come back to haunt you.

 

A text on existential vanity could be meaningful.