An assemblage of details

Are you the same person you were as a child?

[Virgin and Child (detail), Cima da Conegliano, Galleria degli Uffizi]

Are you the same person you used to be? That’s the question Joshua Rothman asks in this recent article in the New Yorker.

He says that there are two types of people: “dividers” and “continuers”. Dividers look back on past stages of their life as if they were stories about some other person. Continuers regard the past more like a recent memory.

This was news to me. I’ve always assumed that when people say things like, “I was a different person then” they simply meant that they have evolved in many ways, or that life is very different from how it used to be. But apparently, many people feel as if the past literally happened to someone else. They feel that they’ve fundamentally changed.

In either case, it seems that “who I am” and “who I used to be” are both stories that I tell myself, and like most people, I tell myself the story that seems most useful. Some of us believe we have a core character that remains central throughout our lives. For others, it’s a story of renewal. I can see the benefits of both ways of framing life.

One of the things that feels central to my own being is the group of interests, hobbies, and predilections that seem to have accompanied me from childhood, or at least youth. The most obvious one for me is an obsession with clothing, fabric, and crafts.

I don’t know where all of my long-held interests come from, but they feel irresistible to me, like a magnetic pull from inside.

Rothman points out his own father’s love of Star Trek as an example of a “seemingly unimportant or trivial element” that actually makes up a central part of who he is.

“Asked to describe ourselves, we might tend to talk in general terms, finding the details of our lives somehow embarrassing. But a friend delivering a eulogy would do well to note that we played guitar, collected antique telephones, and loved Agatha Christie and the Mets. Each assemblage of details is like a fingerprint.”

When reading fiction, you probably notice that the best authors paint a vivid portrait of their characters by describing details and quirks, not making grand statements about personality – the old writing adage “show, don’t tell.” That’s because it’s these little details that offer a glimpse into how we see the world and what is interesting to us about it.

When you create things, it’s also what can feed your particular style and point of view. As Katherine Hepburn once said, “If you always do what interests you at least one person is pleased”.

Interests come and go. We all go through phases. But there’s something about the ones that stick around through the years, no matter how small or strange or trivial, that seem to speak to what is central to who I am and what it means to be me.

Head, Heart, Hands

Things to make us think, feel, and do.

• Mind-wandering isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It helps us to prepare for the future and even build social bonds.

• The Best-Ever To-Do List. Why do we stop doing joyful stuff like this as adults?

• Don’t get on the bus. I have thought about this analogy several times this week as stress or anxiety or frustration crept up on me. Try it, maybe?

• Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough. This thread is so full of thoughtful ideas for one of my core anxieties (and really, the whole concept of this newsletter).

• On the topic of not having all the time in the world, here are 7 great but notoriously hard to finish books. Have you read any of them? (I’ve finished 2).

• How often you really need to wash clothes to keep them clean. I’m a big believer in making things last, so I found this helpful.

• I once ran a marathon. Do not recommend. Afterwards, I sat down on the curb and started bawling. Apparently, the “sports cry” is a thing!

• I came across this amazing intarsia sweater on ebay randomly, by a 1980s brand called Susie Lee. Does anyone know anything about them? A google search revealed a treasure trove of intarsia, mostly landscapes.

Here’s a photo from one of my morning walks this week. These are my next door neighbor’s goats. I always say hello to them.

Question of the week: What’s held your interest?

Is there something that has held your interest for a decade or more, perhaps even from childhood? It could be an interest, a collection, a hobby, a writer, an artist, or anything else you remain fascinated by.

Share with us in the comments.

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