What Do You Hope Never Changes About You?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in Tanks & Skinnys with a cup of coffee, scrambled eggs, toast, and a book I’d recently bought: The Brothers Karamazov.

I’d gone in for breakfast and a bit of reading. Nothing particularly remarkable about that. Except, as tends to happen when I read, somewhere between the coffee and Dostoevsky, I started thinking about something else entirely.

I should probably tell you right about now that this happens a lot.

Books don’t stay books for very long around me. They become notebooks, a trail of highlighted passages, reflective journals, half-finished blog posts, Google searches, voice notes I fully intend to listen back to but never do. At least three other books. And occasionally what can only be described as a full-blown investigation.

And yes, I do ask myself, “Honestly, Aleye… will you ever stop doing this?”

I’ve asked myself that question many times. Usually it’s said with equal parts affection and mild frustration, because there are moments when I genuinely wish I could just read a chapter like a normal person. Read the words, nod thoughtfully, and turn the page.

Well, that’s not who I am.

Every other paragraph seems to trigger another question, which is wonderful if you’re writing a blog, but not so much if you’re trying to finish the last few pages of one chapter before your breakfast.

As a counsellor, I sit with people who want to change. As a writer, I write about change. As a human being with internet access, I’m reminded every six minutes after I open social media that I should probably be improving something: my habits, mindset, body, productivity, boundaries… the list is endless.

Everything is a project nowadays. Lord, help me!

And don’t get me wrong. I think growth is great. I’ve changed in ways I’m grateful for. I’ve outgrown beliefs, loosened roles, and learned things about myself that I wish I’d known many years earlier. But with all the self-improvement and self-reinvention, I realised I’d almost never asked the opposite question.

What do I hope never changes?

If you had asked me nineteen years ago who I was, I would have given you a very different answer.

But the roles have changed. So have the circumstances. My priorities have changed. My tolerance for BS has certainly changed, thank goodness.

Life has introduced me to many versions of myself: daughter, caregiver, sister, friend, mother, student, administrator, volunteer, counsellor, writer, Airbnb host, chronic over-thinker, and every now and again, a woman who spends twenty minutes analysing a single sentence and then rewards herself with coffee for all her hard work.

There are versions that stayed. Some quietly left the room. A few, thankfully, have been relieved of their duties.

Looking at that list now, I realise curiosity has been following me around for a very long time.

It’s what made me ask questions when everyone else seemed happy with the answers. It’s what drew me towards psychology. It’s what makes me genuinely fascinated by people’s stories. Both what happened to them, and how they make sense of what happened.

It’s what sent me wandering through identity, personas, attachment, protective beliefs, and all the wonderfully chaotic things that make us human.

It’s probably the reason I can’t read a simple article without intermittently stopping to think:

“Hmm… but is that actually true?”

“Hold on a minute, that’s culturally specific.”

“What exactly do they mean by that?”

Which, depending on the day, is either curiosity or a very inefficient way to read.

A book that might take some people five hours to finish can take me a month because I’m usually having a second conversation with it. One claim becomes a question. The question becomes three more. Before I know it, I’m wandering off into side roads involving context, exceptions, culture, perspective, and assumptions.

Curiosity has gotten me into trouble too. Just so you know.

We’re talking about the same person who wrote a book about identity and then spent months afterwards questioning some of her own ideas. It’s a trapdoor. Sometimes it prevents me from simply encountering an idea without immediately pulling it apart and looking underneath it.

Ok. There. I said it.

Some people lose afternoons scrolling social media. I do too, by the way. Heehee. But I also lose afternoons wondering whether the self is something we discover or something we create.

I hear someone say, “Be yourself,” and I immediately want to ask, “Which self? Be specific, please. I can’t deal.”

I can promise you that neither activity produces a clean kitchen. But only one of them somehow ends up becoming a blog post.

What I’ve come to appreciate is that curiosity keeps life from becoming too small. It leaves room for surprise, revision, and the possibility that I might be wrong.

It feels healthier than wandering through life convinced you’ve already figured everything out.

We spend so much time trying to become better versions of ourselves. Healthier, stronger, wiser, more confident, more healed. And I agree, many of those things are worth pursuing.

But what if some of the best parts of us are not waiting to be developed?

What if they’re already here?

I often think about this through the lens of my Identity Bracelet framework. The bracelet changes throughout our lives. New beads form, old beads loosen. Some fall off altogether. Certain roles become less important. New ones find us. The bracelet is always moving. It’s never truly finished. Nor should it be.

But maybe there are a few qualities running through it that we’re quietly hoping life leaves intact.

For me, it’s the part that remains interested.

Interested in people, in ideas, in how we become who we are. Interested enough to follow a question even when I’m not entirely sure I want to know where it leads.

If life insists on changing me, I hope it leaves that part alone.

What about you?