We spend so much of our lives trying to be consistent. We want our beliefs to align, our actions to match our words, our past selves to recognize who we are today. But what if consistency itself is the problem?

Consider how we change throughout a single day. The person who wakes at dawn with ambitious plans is not quite the same as the one who scrolls late at night, making excuses. The you who is patient with a stranger might snap at someone you love an hour later. We contain contradictions constantly, yet we torture ourselves trying to smooth them out.

Perhaps the pursuit of a unified self is just another story we tell to feel in control. Maybe we are more like rivers than statues—always the same river, yet never the same water. The person you were ten years ago made choices based on who they were then. You can honor those choices without being bound to them. You can acknowledge that person without pretending they are you.

This isn't an argument for moral relativism or endless self-reinvention. It's something subtler: the recognition that integrity might not mean being the same person all the time, but rather being honest about who you are right now. Being true to yourself might actually require admitting that your self is plural, provisional, evolving.

When someone points out that we've changed our mind, we often feel defensive. But why? What if changing our minds is evidence of paying attention rather than weakness? What if the person who believes the same thing at sixty as they did at twenty hasn't been thinking?

The real question isn't whether we're consistent. It's whether we're willing to meet each version of ourselves with compassion—the one who made mistakes, the one who is making them now, and the future self who will look back on today with something between recognition and bewilderment.

Who are you becoming, and is that someone you're willing to meet?

#philosophy #identity #change #reflection