Life is cruel and fragile
"I Had a Stroke at 33," which many of my friends on FB linked, left me weeping and briefly non-functional in the middle of a work day. (Take that as a warning if you decide to follow the link). I texted Matt afterward just to say "life is so fragile."
I think what moved me the most about the article is how the author's friends couldn't tell anything was wrong, even when she stopped being able to talk. I like to think that if I stopped talking, my friends would notice. But who knows? It really brings home how we are so alone in fleshy, fragile shells.
It also reminds me that so much of what we call identity is based on a very physical, very squishy brain. The author, someone who, enrolled in an MFA program, probably defined herself as a writer suddenly became unable to write, unable to even string words together, unable to tell the divine lies necessary for fiction. I can't even imagine what that must be like. I'm not sure I could survive it.
Of course, the truth is that our personality, our identity, isn't based entirely on our brainmeats. It's based on other's snapshots of what our brainmeats cause us to do at any given moment. People see us not as who we are today, but as echoes of who we were at hundreds of moments in the past.
This is a blessing and a curse. This is why, thankfully, somebody like Terry Pratchett will still be a writer, even after Alzheimer's has eroded much of that capability in him. But it's also why it's so hard for people to perceive change in us.
And so we come full, navel-gazing circle.
I think what moved me the most about the article is how the author's friends couldn't tell anything was wrong, even when she stopped being able to talk. I like to think that if I stopped talking, my friends would notice. But who knows? It really brings home how we are so alone in fleshy, fragile shells.
It also reminds me that so much of what we call identity is based on a very physical, very squishy brain. The author, someone who, enrolled in an MFA program, probably defined herself as a writer suddenly became unable to write, unable to even string words together, unable to tell the divine lies necessary for fiction. I can't even imagine what that must be like. I'm not sure I could survive it.
Of course, the truth is that our personality, our identity, isn't based entirely on our brainmeats. It's based on other's snapshots of what our brainmeats cause us to do at any given moment. People see us not as who we are today, but as echoes of who we were at hundreds of moments in the past.
This is a blessing and a curse. This is why, thankfully, somebody like Terry Pratchett will still be a writer, even after Alzheimer's has eroded much of that capability in him. But it's also why it's so hard for people to perceive change in us.
And so we come full, navel-gazing circle.