i know who i am today, but who am i tomorrow?

I know who I am today, but who am I tomorrow?

What a loaded question. One that I cannot answer myself. If you can answer it effortlessly, without a second thought, you have my full attention.

These past two weeks, my class tutorials have been quite challenging. My research has taken many directions; exploring parallel universes, neuroplasticity, consciousness vs. awareness, and so much more. Understanding the scope I want to focus my attention on has been the difficult part.

My tutor challenged us to conduct a small intervention. I kept thinking of ways to initiate this, but the act of doing is more difficult than receiving. As I kept trying to think about the possibilities of this intervention, this question kept coming to mind: I know who I am today, but who am I tomorrow?

If I’m being honest, I don’t know why this question came to mind. Do I know who I am today? Has the past 25 years and 57 days since my first breath allowed me to understand my self-positionality?

It’s interesting because there are an infinite number of versions of myself that exist between today and tomorrow, but how do the actions I choose right now predict which version of myself I am tomorrow?

So I made the question into a sign and attached a QR code, which links to a Google Form. I printed some copies and went around campus taping them up, hoping for a curious audience to interact with my sign, and share their “free-willed” thoughts. Fortunately, I was able to receive two anonymous responses. One that mentioned, “it’s a sensitive topic for me.”

I appreciate the honesty, because in a way, isn’t it a sensitive topic for all of us? Do the decisions I make now (in the past) represent the outcome of my future?

To be honest, I can question all of this for quite a while. So I am going to articulate my thoughts using two pictures I took after coming across these sceneries over the past few days.

Photo 1 - “A ‘Single’ Identity” (Limehouse, London)

Photo 2 - “Multiple Identities” (Central Saint Martins, UAL)

The first photo, which I named “A 'Single' Identity,” is barely even a chair at this point. It is completely unusable, but it caught my attention on a recent walk. In my opinion, it is the best representation of my view of a single identity. I feel much of society struggles to allow oneself to be vulnerable to growth over time, trapped in the illusion of environmental or psychological constraints. The longer we sit in one chair, the more it's bound to start breaking down after a certain point.

The second photo is a scene I came across at university. There was an event happening, and the way these chairs were lined up and complementing each other was quite an intriguing sight. I feel this photo best represents multiple versions of a single identity. Each chair you sit on has something different to offer: a new view, a new thought, a new feeling, a new you. Some spots that I am comfortable with, and some that I am not. However, I have the ability to choose which chair I would like to sit on at any given time.

In the same way, when I think of who I am today, I am someone still deciding where to sit tomorrow.