Throughout our lives we grow, we learn, we experience, and we age. If you really think about it, aging is a profound experience that intersects deeply with the big questions of human existence: “Who am I”? “Why am I here”? “What is my purpose”? “What happens when I die”? I am now in my senior years, and as I have aged, my understanding of these questions and answers to them has continuously evolved over my lifetime. This evolution was shaped by my accumulated life experiences, my changing perspectives, newly assimilated information (at least new to me) and the increasing awareness of my mortality.
The question "Who am I?" definitely became more nuanced with my increasing age. In youth, my identity was very pliable, often defined by external factors such as family, friends, associations, culture, and social roles. But as I aged, there was a significant shift with a growing tendency toward introspection and seeking a clearer, more authentic sense of myself beyond societal labels. Aging provided me the opportunity to reflect on the evolving nature of my identity with the blending of experiences, achievements, successes, failures, and all the lessons learned from all of that. It revealed to me that I am not a fixed being born with a predefined personality, abilities or destiny, but rather I am an adaptable being in a continuous process of becoming, shaped by events, time, interconnections, change, and sometimes lucky or unlucky chance.
