It has taken a lifetime to realize that you can discard the old versions of yourself, or at least the parts that no longer serve you. I lived for nearly half a century before this dawned on me, even though I had been throwing out the old, bringing in the new, and thriving on change all along.

I never realized fully what I was doing, but in counselling others to embrace change, I realize that so much of what stops them is the fear of becoming no one. Not just someone they no longer know as they cast off the past iterations but someone they are afraid they won’t be able to know, as though there is nothing to discover or do once they have said goodbye to the things that are no longer them.

I wonder about the elasticity of identity. It is not nearly as fixed as we imagine. It is important, but it is unstable.