You spend years becoming yourself and then more years discovering which parts were temporary.

You spend years assembling an identity, and then you spend more years finding out which parts of it were structural and which were scaffolding. The tastes, the politics, the certainties, the way you present yourself: some of it turns out to be you and some of it was borrowed from a group, a period, or a person. Losing the temporary parts feels like loss and is closer to sorting.

When something you thought was central starts to fall away, do not rush to replace it. Notice what remains when it is gone. What survives several of those episodes is a better description of you than anything you could have declared at twenty-five.