[spieglt]

Reminded me of this:

"In the strict sense, it is not true that one's character is unchangeable; rather, this popular tenet means only that during a man's short lifetime the motives affecting him cannot normally cut deeply enough to destroy the imprinted writing of many millennia. If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable, so that out of him little by little an abundance of different individuals would develop. The brevity of human life misleads us to many an erroneous assertion about the qualities of man."

- Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

[ben_w]

> If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable, so that out of him little by little an abundance of different individuals would develop.

Perhaps it would, perhaps it would not.

For what this strange anecdote is worth, Alzheimer’s had not robbed my mother of her personality even when it was robbing her of object permanence, the concept of things having a left hand side, numbers over four, and speech.