Did a lifelong mime like Marcel Marceau remember what his own voice sounded like before he died? Did that last yelp, gasp, sigh or choke before he died mean much more because he wasn’t an everyday speaker like us?
Did he ever wonder to himself, ‘Who am I behind this mask?’
When he mourned, did he mourn in silence?
How do you mourn in silence?
When a surgeon loses a hand, what is she?
A man. A woman. A nobody.
It’s not that she shouldn’t be able to provide for herself.
But if she spent twenty years of her life making a living off of her steady, stable and slender hands, then who is she without one of them?
How does one part of your body define the whole part of your self?
In the process of maturity. puberty. liberty.
When am I ever any different than the person I was before?
Am I the same as I was 15 years ago? 5 years ago? 5 seconds ago?
Is self-identity static or dynamic?
If it’s static, then we never change. We are always going to be the same … thing … no matter what we do, do not do. No matter what is done to us or not done to us, we are we.
If it’s dynamic, then there’s no such thing as self-identity. It’s never the same, only pieces of ourselves at any given time may resemble pieces of ourselves at any other given time. Self-identity is a man-made creation in response to our own realization to our mortality.
