Your self-image is partly formed by your past and what you remember, consciously or not. You probably have been in a situation like this: you get greeted by your classmates at a reunion with welcome cheers and fond memories; you might feel confused if you have lived all those years with the memory that you were a loner at that school and making friends was difficult for you. Why do you remember certain situations from the past differently than others do?

We have many memories and feelings about past events that we can never verify. Consequently, we can never be sure of what our “self” is or who we are because thinking of yourself as a loner instead of a more popular kid in the classroom might greatly affect your self-image. Despite this, most of what we remember and feel as a part of our self-image is probably true. However, it is hard to determine which parts; this might be a source of our insecurities about who we are.

We also add new memories every moment we live; they might not immediately affect your “self.” but some of them can have significant effects in the future without you realizing it. In this constant stream of input, finding the source of new and important events might be difficult when looking back, overwhelmed as we are by our senses. Your memories might feel focused at a certain time in the past when you remember them, but the reality is often that these memories are a collage of miner events put together later to fit your current self-image. We not only have a hard time locating the source of our memories at a later date, but we also play a part in their construction after the fact, and both of them are in constant motion.

We often feel our self, but many of us are also looking for our self. We often hold on to a self and let our inner workings or unconsciousness maintain that image of our self(s) through subtle manipulation. No matter what is happening, your self is constantly in motion, going nowhere but always becoming.

Gilles Deleuze has written about the self in his work; underneath, you can read some quotes. There is also a famous study about memories of the 9/11 attack that highlights the problems we have with memories; read it here: https://news.lafayette.edu/2021/09/07/remembering-9-11-are-flashbulb-memories-accurate-20-years-later/ or do a search for it.

  “The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities.”

“To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.”

“Lose your face: become capable of loving without remembering, without phantasm and without interpretation, without taking stock. Let there just be fluxes, which sometimes dry up, freeze or overflow, which sometimes combine or diverge.”

Gilles Deleuze