| Researchers have studied how much of our personality is set from childhood, but what you’re like isn’t who you are.  Illustration by Juan Bernabeu Joshua Rothman poses a thought experiment in a fascinating essay in this week’s issue: “Try to remember life as you lived it years ago, on a typical day in the fall. . . . Does the self you remember feel like you, or like a stranger? Do you seem to be remembering yesterday, or reading a novel about a fictional character?” How you answer that question likely reflects whether you view your life as an uninterrupted narrative of a single self or an episodic story with a main character who’s changing—maybe slightly, maybe entirely—over time. Are you the same person today that you were when you were six, or sixteen? Do you want to be? And, perhaps more vitally, how would you even know for sure? Rothman surveys the ways that artists and researchers have approached these questions, and considers how internal and external factors shape our understanding of self, what it takes for people to really change, and if we can rightly claim to be the authors of our own life stories. It’s a trip—even if we’re travelling a shorter distance than we imagine. —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor | 
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