On Accidents

If you knew me in middle school, there is no chance you would be able to either find or recognize me. I'm sure you also changed drastically following your middle school years. I, however, underwent a few additional changes which further demarcate middle school Hunter from 2018 Hunter. Yet despite all these happy accidents, I am still the same person somehow.

I was born with a gnarly underbite. At one point, I could clench my teeth and still stick part of my tongue out. If my jaw stayed its original state, the angle would have worn away my molars by my 30's. So shortly before I turned 18, I underwent orthognathic surgery to correct my jaw. Eight hours of surgery, four titanium plates, four weeks with a wired jaw, eight months of recovery, & a veritable smorgasbord of pain meds yielded a brand new face. I met my college admissions counselor two weeks before the surgery. She did not recognize me when we met again in the spring. I told her it was ok; I literally had a different face since the last time we met.

To further complicate things for my middle school peers, I added another layer of dissimilarity: my beard. The surgery, while largely successful, left a small cosmetic asymmetry on the left & right corners of my jaw. So I proudly embraced my father's genes and grew a beard. Through many iterations & epic failures I now proudly wear & maintain a happy, healthy beard which fits my face well. In fact, I make my own beard oil. I use beard conditioner & shampoo. Each morning I use utility balm. On special occasions I'll even pull out my mustache wax. Beard care has become one of my newest little loves.

Finally, as if facial surgery & a burly beard were not enough, I added one final layer of distance between 2018 Hunter & his middle school peers. My birth name was Mason Hunter Green-Myers. For a multitude of reasons, when I married my wife Karina we both changed our last name to Myers. Though most people know me as Hunter Green Myers, my legal name is Mason Hunter Myers. Thus, I am now a man with three subtly different names. So if you know someone from my middle school looking to reconnect, tell them to Google Mason Hunter Myers & look for the guy they won't recognize with the big red beard.

One thing has not changed between 2008 & 2018. I'm still a nerd. To give a brief example, I frequently revisit my logic textbook from college to practice my logic proofs, categorical logic principles, & keep sharp on my predicate logic. In fact, I explained the ideas of necessary & sufficient conditions to my wife yesterday (she's a nerd too). It's a pretty easy concept to follow. Having oxygen in the atmosphere is a necessary condition for human life, but it's not sufficient as we need lots of other things like food & water. Pouring a bucket of freezing water on you while you are sleeping is a sufficient condition to wake you up, though it is by no means necessary! Being an unmarried man is a necessary & sufficient condition for being a bachelor. You get the picture.

Philosophers use necessary & sufficient conditions to figure out definitions for things like art, personhood, beauty, justice, or science. At heart, these conditions attempt to understand the essential features of a thing. What makes art art, such that if it didn't meet that criteria it wouldn't be art? What makes music music? What makes a person a person? What makes you you? What makes Hunter Myers Hunter Myers?

You see, we often think about ourselves through a lot of accidental properties or conditions. I don't mean accidents like, "Oh dear, I seem to have spilled my coffee." Accidental properties are things that may be part of something but aren't essential to making it what it is. Wearing a button-down shirt & jeans is an accidental property. Wearing glasses is an accidental condition. Having a capacity for reason & morality is an essential human property. Most of the ways we describe ourselves include our present occupation, birth place, favorite sports team, or political affiliation. These are accidental conditions & properties.

But then consider the following problem: if you commit to keeping a 1960's Mustang in working order, you will eventually need to replace original parts. First it might be tires, then some of the dials, or maybe it will include the interior. But imagine that given enough time & the availability of parts, you end up replacing every single part of the Mustang. None of the original parts will be there. The question then becomes, "Is it still the same car?"

You see, we face a similar problem with our own identity. Our bodies naturally replace cells at such a rate that the you when you were born has been, in a literal sense, replaced by the time you are 30. Not only did my face & name change, on a cellular level I'm a completely different person since middle school. So, is middle school Hunter a categorically different person than 2018 Hunter? Is there no hope that I may be known by those in my past? Is there any chance I may ever truly know myself as a being constituted by so many accidental changes?

When he thought back on his life, St. Augustine turned to his memories. He did not treat his mind like a big database of information & experiences. Rather, he understood that through all the accidental changes of time & circumstances, there was a cohesive story in his identity. In his memory, he glimpses the changes that made Augustine Augustine.

I believe an necessary condition to have an identity at all is to remember. I was still Hunter in middle school, in spite of all the conditions that changed since then. Part of our existence consists in a unified synthesis of our memories & present consciousness. Thus my essential properties incline me to define what I am, namely, a human being. But my accidental properties inform who I am. I understand myself differently & hopefully more accurately since middle school. But, I was still myself then.

You & I are formed through the accidents of time, chance, community, & I believe also divine Grace. To be at all is a gift. To have a substantial identity that we can point to & attempt to understand is a miracle. A lot of brilliant philosophers attempted & are still attempting to understand a human being's essential properties in order to figure out just what exactly this thing is we call the 'self'. There exists a deep apophaticism in our identity, yet this also draws us deeper into the mystery & gift of our identity. So to close, I encourage you & I to contemplate two implications of this mystery. First, you are more than the mere accidents of time & circumstance which inform your present. Second, your understanding of your own 'self' extends both from the past to the present and on into who you hope to become. Thus the tension will always be not only who you have been, but who you will become. And that will not happen by any mere accident.