Identity in Motion

Thinking about the self when nothing stays still

“What I love most about rivers is / You can’t step in the same river twice / The water’s always changing, always flowing.” — Just Around the Riverbend, Pocahontas

People like to romanticize change. Growth. Becoming. But rivers don’t just flow gently forward—they flood, they carve things away until nothing recognizable is left.

There’s a quote that’s followed me for years:

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” — William Blake

Standing water is dangerous. But so is water that never stops moving.

Some people never change. Same haircut, same stories, same opinions locked in amber. They call it being “true to themselves,” but it looks more like fear. I used to smoke, but I never thought of it as who I was. It was an addiction I wanted to beat. I did. But I know people who’ve wrapped their identity around it so tightly that quitting would mean cracking themselves open. Easier to keep destroying yourself than to give up the identity built around it.

Other people can’t stop changing. Always reinventing, always sanding themselves down, chasing some better version that never arrives. Most of us end up somewhere in the middle—reshaped not by choice, but by erosion. Life happens. The river doesn’t ask permission.

An old photo came up on Facebook the other day. Early twenties. I stared at it and felt nothing. That guy is dead. I remember being him, but I don’t recognize him. I remember that version of me thinking how far I’d come since eighteen, how different I already was. Now I see the pattern: every version of me was convinced it was the true self, and every one was wrong.

Twenty-something me at the edge of the canyon, convinced I was the final version—only to learn the landscape keeps changing.

I’m not the man I was ten years ago. I’m not even sure I like the man I am now. Will I like whoever comes next? I don’t know. Some of this change comes from learning, from trying to be better. But some of it feels involuntary. My brain is changing. My emotions are mutating. My reactions feel unfamiliar. I didn’t sign off on any of this. I’m just watching it happen from inside the current.

Losing my job sped all of this up. Any major life event bends the river—sometimes sharply, sometimes violently—splitting it into unfamiliar branches. When that happens, you lose track of who you are. You hope to drift into some calm lake of awareness where you can drop anchor and rest for a while.

Identity is an anchor in the chaos of life. When you lose it—or don’t know where it is—you’re adrift in a sea of unknowns. It’s terrifying.

I’ve had too much time alone with my thoughts. That’s how you poison a well. So I’ve turned to music—listening, playing, standing in packed rooms where nobody knows me and nobody cares. Music doesn’t ask me to explain myself. It just fills the space so the silence doesn’t kill me.

I started a YouTube channel focused on new music. It wasn’t a strategy. It just happened. I like discovering bands that haven’t been frozen in time yet. I never need to hear “Stairway to Heaven” or “Hotel California” again. That music is finished. I’m more interested in things that still feel unresolved.

I think this channel is me trying to convince myself I’m still moving. Still alive. Trying to write the next chapter in a world that feels increasingly hostile and indifferent.

Am I the river? Or am I just debris in it—bouncing off rocks, pulled under, occasionally breaking the surface long enough to breathe?

I don’t know.

What I do know is this: I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know who I’m becoming. And I’m not sure I’m going to like that guy when he finally washes up.

And for no reason except that this blog has used a river analogy, here is The River by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

Enjoy,
James