Everyone wants to be noticed. 

Maybe that want is more subdued in some and more noisy in others, but it’s still a subconscious want in all of us. In some way or another, we all cry and vie for the spare glances of someone else, even if it is just for a split moment.

Being noticed can mean a lot of things though. 

Maybe you’re noticed because you dress prim and proper, maybe people think you’re funny, maybe people think you’re just a brown-nose for a certain teacher. There’s plenty of things someone can say about you based on what they noticed. 

People notice people for their qualities, whether that attention is in a positive or negative light is something that’s always up in the foggy air. 

So maybe they start to like those qualities of yours, those little quirks and habits and niches that are so distinctly “you”, that makes you not anyone else. They stick with you because they like those and vice versa on your end. That’s what friendship is right?

So one day, what if you lost all of that, all of those things that you and your friends described you as you. Those special traits that defined you. What made you noticed.

Would they still like you? 

Are you still the same person if you’ve changed everything about yourself? 

What makes you, you?

Well there’s a thought paradox that stems from a Greek myth called the Ship of Theseus to make things slightly simpler. It’s about a ship slowly rotting away, bit by bit, so they replace the decaying wood bit by bit until the whole ship is constructed solely out of new wood, none of the original left. 

So the ancient Greeks then asked, is this still the same ship if everything that was it is now gone?

Is it an entirely new ship or the original because of the structure it shares?

Is it the sentiment attached to it or the physical material that makes it Theseus’ legendary ship?

Is the ship even a ship?

You’re looking for an answer right? 

Honestly, I don’t have one. 

It’s something that’s been bothering me for about five years now, ever since 5th grade me accidentally stumbled upon this paradox reading a Percy Jackson book in a moody afternoon. It grew up with me over the years, the answers shifting and changing in the back of my mind, from slight adjustments to full-blown revamps. 

The only thing that’s remained consistent was the question itself.

But as I was writing this out, mulling over the words and phrases to cherry-pick, I thought to myself,

“Maybe it doesn’t matter”

Maybe I should just be me, without the pretenses.

Who cares if I change, who cares if I’m a totally different person the next day?

I know I’m still me.

And as I think about the rotating cast of people that have walked in and out of my life, the more and more convinced I become. 

Because somehow all of those qualities of the past me’s they hold are still a part of me in some confusing and messy way. Those wooden boards that I saw as old and useless and needing to be replaced are things people still think of me as. 

I’m me. 

And somehow that’s never going to change.