In(ter)vention

I moved around a lot as a kid. That's a thing, right?

I also don't know my biological father, which is only a thing if you think about too often or for too long. I once had a girlfriend say she wouldn't want children with someone who didn't know their family's full medical history. I think she was more concerned about her unborn childrens' medical future (sorry babe, they're gonna be brats, too).

There are a lot of factors that make up your personality. Some of them are deep; so deep that you never ever really understand how they affect your choices. Sometimes I think back on the things I said "no" to, or "yes" to, or "no" then "yes"... you get the idea... and I wonder if I would have made a different made a different choice if my family had stayed in Calgary, or never left Vancouver, or had skipped living in Sutton altogether.

I did an interview for MOST Magazine yesterday, with woman who fled Colombia with her family. She spoke no English when she left, and all the inventory of her life that wouldn't fit in a single suitcase got left behind.

Minimal baggage.

But, she was 48 when she left her home. She'd had a life and created an identity. That's something that I wonder if I've done in a really focused way. I've adapted to so many new situations that I wonder what about me isn't adaptable – what's stable.

I guess my question is "How sticky is identity?"

Businesses rebrand. Cities expand. Eco-systems collapse and (sometimes) the bounce back. What do people do if the processes that create them are interrupted.

The woman I spoke with yesterday didn't have the words to describe (in English) what she was going through as she left her other self behind. "We might call that re-invention," I offered, thinking about the opportunity that she had to make herself almost anything she wanted. She had a second chance, so to speak, to be somebody and fill a new role.

But why should anyone want to do that? Why, unless you're forced to for your very survival, would you want to abandon the people and places and things that make you. It's like having a fire sale for you soul – what do you do with the empty space once you've cleared out your inventory? Is the space ever empty, or does the ash in the air after the fire settle in any way that informs how you move.

I think about memory in times like this. What is it worth and how do you share it when the things it signifies are gone? How does an individual enact the things they don't want to forget for fear of losing themselves?