My Many Faces: A Reflection Upon the Different People I Have Been

This entry is about change, but more specifically about how we as people often change over time. It is something, I think, we don't reflect upon very often, but I think most people can say that, if they take a moment to think about who they are now as opposed to who they were when they were of a younger age, they have certainly changed in some way that is obvious to themselves, at least. For me, anyone who can say they are the same person at the end of their life as they were at the beginning (as a young man or woman) isn't being entirely truthful, or at least not being properly reflective upon their life past.

I can only use myself as an example. Whether or not I stand apart for from others in all the changes of personality, opinion, and habit I have experienced over my short life or not is not obvious to me; I know myself more than I know others. Anybody who is familiar with me knows I am a man who certainly has his eccentricities, but in truth there was a day I would argue I was even more so. If you were to sit down and have a conversation with my 15 year old self I think you would find yourself talking with an even more blatantly strange young "man" than talking to me now. Even from my own point of view, looking back upon who I was then – the way I thought and felt about things – is strange even to myself. How is it I could have changed so much? Perhaps these changes are most evident to myself. After all, only I can truly know the extent of how much my thought process has changed since those days.

By the time I had turned 17, I had already realised I had changed a great deal. Entre: A politically minded, idealistic teenager, his ideas often narrow-minded, and (sometimes) ignorant, but still relatively well informed for his age, in fact, I would argue well informed for any age these days. This boy was sure of what he knew, and he was sure he knew more than you. He saw things the average person didn't. He had the answers to so many problems. They were so obvious; why didn't people see them? Well because they weren't as clever as him, of course, that's why, or so he (I) liked to think.

Actually, the ways in which this boy thought were present in him during most of his teens and persisted until he was about 19, but it was when he really came into his own, during his late teens, that they were at their most strongest. But, despite his somewhat arrogant confidence in his own opinions, this disposition was doomed to fail in him from the beginning because of a seed that was planted in him long before: a thirst for knowledge, and something his father had instilled in him for as long as he could remember (with a little help of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol): a healthy awareness of the ills of want, and especially ignorance.

My disdain and loathing for ignorance has shaped who I have become as a person a great deal. I have never been content to form one opinion and stick to it out of principle. That is asinine. It's pathetic, and it's not enduring, despite the common consensus that you are somehow unprincipled if you don't stick to your current principles forevermore: a trick often used by those with morally questionable opinions or objectives who want to shame you into supporting them for as long as possible despite any second thoughts you may have about doing so. Social pressures are a lot stronger than we sometimes want to admit, but I digress.

My strong opinion that ignorance is the root of most of human beings' social ills and suffering meant that I wasn't content to have simply formed a few opinions and stick to them blindly without consideration. I began to read quite a lot more than I had when I was younger, but what would come to have the most effect on me was the many different perspectives I gained from watching various debates and educational videos on YouTube. There I learned that I wasn't quite as clever as I had allowed myself to believe, and over a very short period of time my way of thinking changed drastically.

I was drawn to YouTube mostly out of a desire to watch content concerning Richard Dawkins after having watched an interview he had appeared in concerning his book The God Delusion, which was of great interest to me given my strong disdain for religion during that period of my life. A disdain that has in no way left me, but is also in no way an important aspect of who I am as I perceived it to be in those days. During those days I found that many of my interests changed. Suddenly I wasn't content to simply read and learn about military history as I was before. I began to form a stronger interest in the sciences, even physics and, though I can't say I can make heads and tales of it most of the time, quantum mechanics. These interests persist in me even to-day, but I would say they were strongest in me from the age of 19 until around the age of 22.

Oh the things I have learned since then! Not only facts and knowledge, but valuable lessons and points of view that I feel sure will be with me for a long time to come. Lessons such as the fact that it is much more beneficial for someone to be of an open minded disposition and willing to reconsider their long-held thoughts and beliefs if better arguments win the day. That education and understanding of the world around you is much better than living in ignorance of the world around you. What the overall benefit of that is in one's life is, I don't know. How I am better for the knowledge I have gained over the past 5 or 6 years is in no way obvious to me. I can't say it will have any significant positive effect on my life as a whole one way or another, but I can say it feels good to have a thirst for knowledge as opposed to going through life with no interest in anything truly significant.

Still, I have changed yet again. Though I still have a strong thirst for knowledge, a lot has changed. The young man who was almost totally consumed with the issues of religion and politics isn't nearly so as he used to be. There is no doubt I have strong opinions, but unlike the days I have just written about, I am not quite so vocal about them. Though my opinions on politics and religion are still there, I am not nearly as quick to express them, and the great interest I used to have in immersing myself in those two issues has nearly disappeared. These days, when I visit YouTube to catch up on a few videos now and then, I find myself quite tired of the same old, repetitive arguments of the various Richard Dawkins-like Atheists, and various other vloggers such as Pat Condell, whose material just doesn't sit well with me anymore as it did when I was younger, slightly more idealistic, and ready for contention at every turn. They just don't have anything new to say. I can't say they are flogging a dead horse, but I can can say there is a horse, and it is being flogged, whether or not it's dead or not I'm not certain.

There have been many significant changes in the way I think politically, though I'm not going to go into them other than to say that the main change has been that, unlike in years past, I have lost all faith in the political process, whereas once I honestly believed it was broken but had great potential. That's all I'm going to say about that. Once upon a time I wanted nothing more than to express my opinions of such things. Now, I can honestly say I thoroughly dislike making any mention of it, especially to a potentially broad audience. I don't care if you like my opinions, I don't even want you to know them. I don't want to hear yours. I don't want to talk about them at all, and that is a night and day difference from how I used to be just a few short years ago.

This aspect of myself, I would say, has come about since I joined the military. I have long been of the opinion that as a member of the military I am of course entitled to my opinion just as anybody else is, but I am not at liberty to share my political opinions quite as freely as I once did. That's not to say I don't from time to time, because under the right circumstances I do, but I don't with other military personnel, that much is certain. All that aside, it is harder for me to understand how I've changed since I joined the military. I have changed so much in the past 3 years, but unlike the changes I've gone through in the past, it is less obvious to me how I have arrived at who I am to-day. In many ways I know how I've changed, but I can't tell you why. I am at a particularly unexciting point in my life when it comes to my thoughts and opinions. I guess I've just settled down and "matured" perhaps, whatever you want to call it. Personally I find this maturing business to be alot more like having your soul bludgeoned to death by the world to kill off any remaining excitement and spirit you might have still have left over from your youth, but what do I know? Whatever the case, we have arrived at the end of my reflection on the different people I have been. I say "different people" because sometimes it honestly feels as if who I've been at different periods of my life is in fact completely different than who I was before, even if that of course isn't entirely accurate.