Individuality

What does it mean to be an individual? What is the story of your life made of? What material? Perhaps you say that you are born in a certain country. But  what does it mean to be, for instance, Swedish? Are you very different from people from other nations?
Is there really anything typically Swedish. Isn't everything imported and changing?

 Of course we to some degree are shaped by our upbringing and our culture. We are not totally free...

But when we are aware of our thought patterns, we can choose what thoughts to follow and what to leave...
You will have more freedom, but you will also probably be a little more silent...
It is often more important to show a smile or to lay your hand on someones shoulder, than to say something.

You can see those actions as your karma, they will proceed in the people you meet, perhaps you can change them a bit - and then a part of you is in them. You have transformed... If you influence a young person you will live a long time in him or her, and the part of you that is in the kid will change with time - perhaps grow bigger.
So be careful with the children.

The child you influenced will transport that influence to many other people and perhaps to his och her own children. So your actions will live on a long time.

I is more easy to understand this if you accept that there is no unchanging I in us. Most philosophers today agree with that.
We have no essence, we are more like a jigsaw-puzzle - in Stockholm of today there are so many people from other parts of the world and you can eat food from every corner of the world - so after some years in this city you for sure have changed. You are not the same as when you moved in - so who are you then?

I think that question is far more complicated then we usually believe...

For instance, I can have more in common with a vegetarian interested in mindfulness from the other side of the planet then with my own sister or brother or with my neighbor
I have to respect them, but it can be hard to sit silent near them because we don't share the same inner cosmos...


So being an individual means, in my view, to relate - to other persons, animals, nature and so on. Without relations we are no one.

                                                       



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