What Makes Me, Me

 What Makes Me, Me

I was practicing DJing alone at home. Tupac's California Love. I put the same file on both decks and hit play at the same time. Since they were the exact same file, I thought they would stay matched until the end. But as time went on, the beats slowly started to drift apart. They were the same song from the same starting point, but tiny differences in how each deck played them kept adding up, and eventually they became two different flows.

That's when a thought hit me. People are the same way. Even if you could make a perfect copy of someone, the starting points are different, the experiences at every moment are different, and the way those small differences build up is different. So in the end, they would become a different person. Then what is it that makes me, me?

I once watched a video about something called the 500 Million Year Button. If you press the button, you live through 500 million years of pain without getting old. But the moment you come back to the real world, all those memories disappear and you get 10 million won. Some people said since you don't remember anything, it's the same as getting money in 0.001 seconds. Others said you actually go through 500 million years of suffering, and you can't just ignore that.

Here's how I see it. From the moment you press that button, the one living through those 500 million years, breathing every second, that's me. Just because I can't remember it doesn't mean the pain never happened. The real problem comes after. When the 500 million years end and the memory is erased, the flow of time is cut off. The person who comes back might look the same as me, but that person is not the me who lived through those 500 million years. Because the connection was broken.

Then what about sleep? You might think that when you fall asleep and lose awareness, that's also a break. But I see it differently. While you sleep, your brain is sorting through and putting together all the memories you've built up. Sometimes when you wake up, yesterday's memories are even clearer than before. If everyday memory is like a highway, then sleep is like stepping stones across a river. The path looks different, but it's not broken.

Following this thought leads to a very real problem: dementia. Dementia is scary. But I don't see it as memory being cut off. I see it more as the path changing shape. If life is normally a road that goes straight ahead or turns where you want it to, dementia is when that road turns into a loop. You go around and around the same track. You repeat the same memories, ask the same questions, tell the same stories. But that person is still breathing every moment, and those moments are still connected. Going around a track is still moving. And sometimes, when you come back around, there might be a brief clear moment where you can choose something for yourself.

Brain death is different. The car is still on the track, but the engine is off. You can't go forward and you can't go back. The ability to choose is gone. You can say the body is alive, but it's hard to say that I still exist as me.

In the end, I think what makes me, me, comes down to three things working together. I am alive and breathing right now. Those moments are connected without being cut off. And within that flow, I can choose my own direction. If even one of these is missing, my sense of self starts to fade. It doesn't turn off like a switch. It's more like the color getting lighter, little by little.

And that fading doesn't only happen in extreme situations. A decision made because everyone around you was doing it. A taste in music that changed because it was popular. A feeling that shifted after seeing how most people reacted online. The one making the choice is clearly me, but whether the feeling behind that choice is truly mine becomes hard to say. In those moments, maybe I'm slowly becoming a lighter version of myself without even knowing it.

So when is my sense of self at its strongest? I think it's when I can fully feel my own emotions as my own. When I meet someone one on one and share real feelings. Or when I'm alone, lost in my own thoughts. These two things point in opposite directions, but they share something. In those moments, I'm sure that what I feel is truly mine. It's not something pushed on me from the outside. It came from inside me.

In the end, what makes me, me, isn't anything grand. I'm breathing right now. I'm connected to yesterday. And I can feel that my emotions are my own. That's me.