I joined this forum, on a different and more-used name, on July 28 2001. I was twelve and a half at the time. Over my entire time here, I have been changing. My thought processes are quickening, I think, and my entire personality is changing as my knowedge and opinions grow.

It's frightening.

I have no idea if I'm unique in my state of self awareness, having never been another person. But from my observations of others around me, it seems that I am. I don't want to sound arrogant, because I have no right to that. I wish I had kept a journal earlier on, as an experiment. (I probably sound completely disjointed) I feel like I could wake up any day and be a slightly different person. And over weeks and months, the change could be so complete that I will have completely changed.

The human body (Oh no, not that again) is similar. Cells such as blood and skin and such things are completely replaced in your body every seven years. I was in a mostly different body by the time I was seven, and will be again in about a year and a half. Is teh same happening to my mind? My memories of time even as far back as a year ago are poor. Is this a product of my having changed so much? Is my fear of losing self credible, or paranoid and psychotic?

I would like to know when people on hatrack feel like they really gained self awareness to the level that they have now, or if it is always changing. I obviously don't have the years of experience you do, but I am curious. I want to know what to expect. I don't want to die and have some other mind take over my body, as similar to my current self as it may be.

Is that how it happens, or am I a freak?

Here's my story: When I was young, I was naive and ignorant. Then, as I grew up through my teenage years, I realized my ignorance and fixed it. Then, at around 17 or 18, I realized that in fixing my ignorance I had become a fool, and that I had not truly fixed anything at all. I discovered that the answers to most of the problems that arose during my teenage years could be solved by going back to things I had known when I was young naive but had given up in the name of fixing my ignorance. The moral of the story is this... what you think you are losing at age 12 may yet return, just in the way that characters in a story that vanish in the early chapters may later appear. You do not change and lose your past. Instead, you are always the product of your entire past. That's how I see it.

(It's late, and my thoughts are muddled. I think I'll end with a quote and then try again tomorrow.)

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Life is a continuous flux and we seek to arrest it, to fix it in stable and determined forms, inside and outside us...But inside ourselves, in what we call the soul, which is the center of ourselves, the flux continues, indistinct, sliding under the barriers we have set up, beyond the limits we have imposed, fashioning a consciousness and constructing a personality for us...
There are reckless spirits who, almost continuously in a state of flux, resist congealing or hardening into this or that form of personality. But even for the more placid ones who have settled into one form or other the melting and blending is always possible.

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Edit to identify quote: Pirandello, Umorismo

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Instead, you are always the product of your entire past. That's how I see it.

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This is my view as well. I do think that this tends to happen much more quickly while you're younger, but your self-concept is always in a state of flux. I'm very different from my self of a year or two ago, but that doesn't mean that the self of that time is dead and gone. It's still part of you.

I CAN say that I remember being self-aware very early. I went to church every single Sunday in my life until age 24 or so and I used to spend the whole hour thinking about stuff. I remember trying to remember not only my first memory, but when I became self-aware. When did I start to really act as an individual? When did I first think, I think, therefore I am? Did the world really exist before I did? Would it still be there if I died? I was thinking these things prior to age seven. I know this because I remember watching everyone else but me go up to communion while I sat there and thought. I remember trying to figure out the meaning of life on earth in a non-religious way. I would picture the earth as so huge, then shrink it down and try to figure out where it fit in the universe. Not the universe I learned about later in science class, but something more conceptual. I would think these expanding and contracting thoughts and I would feel so dizzy I would hold onto the bench for help. I remember the first time I actually understood how there could be other languages besides English and what that really meant in the world.

I too worried that one day I would disappear as a person and be some boring adult person who I had nothing in common with. This has NOT happened. Oh, I may look boring on Hatrack but really, I am not. I still love the same things I liked when I was 10 or 15. I still lie in bed at night and think deep thoughts. I would do it in church if I was still going to church. My priorities have changed, of course, and I spend a huge amount of time working and acting like a professional mature adult. I think I have lost a little of that creative drive I had when I was younger. As you have probably heard, most truly original concepts seem to be created by younger adults. As a science fiction reader and a Hatrack reader I am more open to changing my opinions than I otherwise would be and that scares me too. But, I no longer think that I will change into something I don't recognise.

Hormones did not change me much. I might have more ups and downs than I did when I was prepubertal, but hormones did not radically change my behavior or thought processes. Sure, I saw it happening to some of the girls around me. But they were the ones who were vapid at age 10. The smart ones, or the deep ones like you find here on Hatrack, can and did remain in control if they wanted to. I didn't spend much time around teenage boys but I would imagine it would be similar. I remember meeting a few people in college that I had not seen since age 10. Some had changed radically and I was quite disturbed. One or two were the same, but older and deeper and better. One was warped by her father's televised and shameful firing for doing bad things to his students. I think she recovered and is in law school. I hope. These people and my relatives tell me I haven't changed either.

Well, my friend, you ain't seen nothing yet.

It's true that you will change in the next four years, possibly moreso than you will change in any length of time later on in your life. You will meet people, have new experiences, trials and tribulations, all of which will be a collective of what many call the best years of your life.

But will you change and form so much as to lose "yourself?"

No.

Comparing myself currently (which is a 17 year old) to the version of me at your age, I'm drastically different. I've learned much, grown, made friends, lost friends, fallen, risen, triumphed and been dragged through the horrible humility of failure. All of which I've known repeatedly. You will possibly know all of these, and more.

But to the topic of self-awareness.

Obviously, you've got a good head on you, at least one that can produce coherent posts (understatement.) In my opinion, you've probably already achieved self-awareness, you just don't know it yet. You won't ever lose self unless you don't keep aspects like creativity, emotion, and sensitivity. You may change, and some things you may lose, but it's all inside of you. No matter what happens, no matter what changes that occur inside of you in the upcoming years of adolescence, you will still be yourself.

*Edit: UBB code*

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In my opinion, you've probably already achieved self-awareness, you just don't know it yet.

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How is that possible?

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I too worried that one day I would disappear as a person and be some boring adult person who I had nothing in common with. This has NOT happened. Oh, I may look boring on Hatrack but really, I am not.

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Never, Theca. It's posts like the one above that make you one of the more interesting (if all too infrequent! ) writers here.

The vast run of people often just go through the motions. Being more self-aware, while not exactly rare, gives you a measure of control over your own life and development as a person.

Of course, if you just use it to become selfish or self-absorbed, that's not very pleasant for everyone else around you.

More fun is self-assurance -- the confidence in who you are and what you want to accomplish.

I wish that for everyone!

And, by the way, the changes slow down eventually, but be prepared for rapid changes for the next several years. It goes along with changes in your body, your mind, and your circumstances. You are going from a dependent to an independent functioning human. That's great!

Try to enjoy it and make don't rush things. It'll all happen fast enough.

Self-Actualization: kind of a hokey site, but good on the basics.

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I would like to thank Mr. Meme for expressing in words something that I have felt for the past few years, but have been unable to grasp enough to put into words. I also thank all the people who replied to this thread, for making me feel a lot better, and for pulling me out of one of those teenage depressions.

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Polemarch, it sounds like you've been going through a rough time. Sometimes all you can do with the teenage years is survive them -- your life is little under your own control, and yet you have a growing responsibility for what happens to you. It's frustrating, to say the least.

2) Teen change: I think that what makes being a teenager so frightening is not that it is the "Biggest" change you go through in life, but it is the first that you fully remember and comprehend. The YOU at 16 is not the same as the YOU at 6, nor the YOU at 26 or 36 or 96. It may be difficult, but come to grips with it. Change Happens.

3) You do have to grow older. You do not have to grow up. Enjoy youth while you have it. Then again, ejoy the wisdom of age when you get it.