April Prompts for Probable Identities

Altered states, retrospective epiphanies, and better words for the unknowable

Sometimes I’ll come across about a specific thought exercise and it will recolor the way I think about…everything. (Or at least it will for a week, then onto the next.)

This week’s epiphany: those who consider life episodically versus those who view life with a long arc, as prompted in this article.

Essentially the question is:
Are you someone who looks back at your own life as one long, slowly unfolding, interconnected novel, recognizing the ‘you’ of now as the ‘you’ of then? Or, do you consider life to be structured in chapters, essentially a la carte vignettes that exist independent of one another? You may carry pieces of these former lives with you, but you and the old ‘you’ might as well have a different set of fingerprints.

“What distinguishes human beings is our ability to “take a stand” on what and who we are; in fact, we have no choice but to ask unceasing questions about what it means to exist, and about what it all adds up to. The asking, and trying out of answers, is as fundamental to our personhood as growing is to a tree.”

a Harry Styles billboard in West Hollywood, CA

So with that…more questions without answers; and a set of monthly prompts that consider giving better words to unknowable concepts.

April Prompts for Probable Identities: