Category — Uncategorized

I am a few weeks away from a milestone birthday, making me sentimental and reflective.

Do you know the Ship of Theseus thought experiment? It comes from the story of Theseus. Wikipedia explains: “Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honour Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each individual piece of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one after the other, was it still the same ship?”

Are we the same? Are you the same person if your body replaces all of your cells? Our bodies do that to the tune of billions of cells per day.

About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.

What about if your belief system is dismantled and replaced? What about your values? What if you lose your memories one by one? Are you still you?

And if you’re not you, who are you?

Inside of me are fifty versions of Melissa, a patchwork quilt of Melissas. I can only identify a handful of things that were true at birth that are still true now, and maybe a handful more if we count from upper childhood. Everything else has been overwritten or replaced, like Theseus’s ship.

I’m just trying to mentally unpack it, trace the changes, and remember who I was and what I may be in the future.

I’ve been limiting how much news I consume for a long time, either setting a timer when I think I’ll need the reminder or simply noting the time when I begin reading with a promise to get off after 10 – 15 minutes. Reading the news makes me upset because it’s all terrible, and it is better to read until informed and then move away to process instead of continuing to read opinion after opinion, each telling me that the world is absolutely definitely going to end.

Is it the end of the world?

It feels different, but then I see pieces like that, and I realize that I’ve said before it feels different. So maybe we’re 100% in a state of falling apart, but it never comes?

There is this:

A peer-reviewed 2021 survey of people aged between 16 and 25 around the world found that 56% agreed with the statement “Humanity is doomed”. In a 2020 YouGov poll, nearly one in three Americans said they expected an apocalyptic event in their lifetimes, with the Christian Judgment Day relegated to fourth place by a pandemic, climate change and nuclear war; zombies and aliens brought up the rear.

The end of the article perhaps has the answer.

Once upon a time, children, we traveled with travel guides because we did not have mobile devices. If we wanted to know where to stay or eat, we needed to look it all up in this paper contraption called a book.

The series I liked pointed you to the big tourist spots and had little sidebars that told you about lesser-known attractions, such as visiting Palazzo Zuccari when you were done with the Spanish Steps in Rome. I loved those little sidebars because I thought I was seeing something special. Everyone knew about the Spanish Steps, but all the people using those other travel books didn’t know about Palazzo Zuccari, right? Not counting all the other people standing in front of Palazzo Zuccari holding the same book.

Travel isn’t seeing the unknown as much as seeing the known with your own eyes. Except for unplanned interactions with other people or stumbling into a great randomly chosen restaurant, most travel is about going to see and do things you have seen images of or heard about. It’s not discovering insomuch as witnessing.

But how can you travel so far and not see the things the place is famous for?

We’re planning a trip right now, so I’m thinking about that balance between witnessing the known while leaving time for wandering, which may or may not lead us to something interesting, something not in a tour book.

A few years ago, while we were in France, Josh gently broached the topic of finding things to do once the kids left for college. We put a few things on the list while I sobbed on a bench in Perros Guirec: We would learn all about tea. We would take up birdwatching. I would volunteer with horses.

Over the years, we added things to the list. I would learn how to identify trees by their leaves. We would learn a new language. I would take up jewelry making. And I would try a bellini.

I don’t drink alcohol, but I thought I’d like a bellini. So it went on the list.

It’s not a secret that I didn’t do well with the twins leaving. I became deeply depressed before senior year began, and I’ve been struggling all year with them away. Josh and I haven’t expanded beyond the tea we already drink daily. We halfheartedly look at birds without knowing what we’re seeing. I have not been near a horse beyond the wild horses in Chincoteague. I cannot identify trees or make jewelry. I haven’t even done what I usually do, such as seeing friends or putting together a photo album after a trip. I just haven’t had the energy to do anything beyond the bare minimum.

But a week ago, everything lifted. Nothing changed — the twins are still away, though we’re in the home stretch before they come home for almost four months. But I woke up one Saturday morning and felt different. I opened my computer and started writing a new book. I churned out over 11,000 words in the first week. I started reaching back out to friends. I looked forward to Pesach instead of dreading our meal for two. I started smiling and meaning it.

While I’ve checked nothing else off the list, we added bellinis to our seder menu. Is it kosher to have prosecco as the wine? Is it kosher to add peace nectar to the glass? Possibly not, though we couldn’t find any rules against it. We went for it so we could check something off the list. Baby steps. Maybe next year, we’ll check off two or three things.

I don’t know how I will be in August. If this is just a temporary lifting of my feelings because I know the twins will be home soon for a long visit. But I am hoping that my body and mind are starting to adjust to this new normal. And I’ll take the lightness while it is here.

I mostly liked the bellini. Not enough to have another between Pesachs, but it’s nice to have a new tradition.

I read an interview with an author about her book, The Silence Factory, about a spiders’ silk that can be woven to create a fabric that blocks out sound. So silence becomes the ultimate luxury item, which it is, even in the here and now.

It’s one of the only times when not having something makes you richer than someone who does. Quiet is a corner office with a door. Quiet is a penthouse apartment above a city. It’s easy to create noise but much harder to create silence.

I was drawn to the interview and the book discussion because I love silence. I work in silence. I usually drive in silence. Between noise and silence, I’ll choose silence every time. Or, at the very least, quiet.

What about you?