THE TRAVELLING MAN?

JUST HOW MANY SELVES DOES ONE HAVE?
Thanks, Glenn, for the welcome back.  Within a week I will resume my Corning Self.  Recall the shock I experienced upon opening my suitcase far off, in Adelaide, at my sister's home?  Who was that chap and what was he thinking, I wondered.  But, soon, I became that person...the fellow who is staying with his sister and has a schedule of work to complete, a different cycle to ride, and a different car to dritve (on the other side of the road, too).

I have had several selves whilst the travelling man.  The self with my Adelaide daughter and her family, the self with my Sydney son and his family, the self with my friend Tom and his wife Tony, the self I am here with my Basalt daughter and my eldest grandchild, and the self I have when with my friends Frank and Mary and their family when I am in San Francisco, on the way to and at the end of the way back to Austalia.  These selves aren't  vacation or travelling selves, as when one chances upon strangers (say, at breadfast on the train).  Each personal context is different and evokes a somewhat different Robert.  They are sequential selves, each with their own history of relating and experiences shared with me but not with others.

What would happen if we could get them all into one room?  Would they recognize each other?  Well then, you might ask, Which is the real Robert? or, Is there a real Robert?  Or you might remark, Robert clearly is in a state of temporary lack of sanity!

I might respond with, 'Well, how can there be a real Robert?'.  Look at it this way: each of my body cells is replaced at between two and eight year intervals, the atoms making up the molecules of my life even more often.  I discover that for every human cell of which I am constituted there are some 100 or so other cells; viruses, bacteria, and the like. It appears the real Robert cannot be found there.  What about the Robert all alone?  As a single person I spend a lot of time by myself, even talk to myself.  After a day or so, I find it necessary to flee to the company of others, such a boring fellow!

If there is a single, real Robert, perhaps this singularity resides inside my head. But then I read that my brain, like all brains, is at work rearranging neural networks, according to experience.  At a certain level, as Arthur Eddington once remarked, we are all local concentrations of energy within the great common flux, all joined together, the inanimate and animate, the unknowing and the sentient.

Perhaps then the self is an illusion, a concoction of the flow of the story within which I find myself.  As Tennyson had Ulysses, the eternal traveller, say, "...I am part of all that I have met."

No matter, I have renewed acquaintenances, remet loved ones, and discovered afresh the joy of being with those whom I have met, even a few I thought were lost to me.  Others of you I have not seen in a while.  When I write this blog, I find myself thinking of some of you and wonder if the blog-self might do better to discover you who read these postings more often, or more systematically.  I do not want to be lost from you, or you from me.  Facebook helps somewhat but can be a bit overwhelming.

So, for the self that I become with you, many thanks.