College Admissions Essay: Enduring And Independent Self

I know me. I know who I really am. I know what I am capable of. I am independent and I don’t need anyone to tell me who I am or what I should do. I have been the same person from the time I was born and I will remain the same person till I die. The argument of enduring and independent self is been going on for centuries. But can we really say that we have an enduring self? Do we depend on others or are we independent? I believe that we do have an enduring self. We are not fully independent we depend on others to know who we really are.
Philosophers like Plato, Rene Descartes, and John Locke believed that we all have an enduring self. A self that never changes, that keeps us the same person from the moment we are born till we die. According to philosopher Diotima, “we speak of an individual as being the same as long as he continues to exist in the same form” (Velasquez, 98). We can agree to that a little. Our body does not change very much after a certain age. But what
He says that what keeps us the same person from birth till death is our memories. It is what I remember from when I was a child to when I was an adult, what I did in past and what kind of person I was. But what if I do not remember anything at all? Will I still be the same person? Maybe not. This is what happened to Michael Boatwright. He was a white male born and raised in Florida. He was in the Navy and after leaving the Navy he traveled to Sweden and learned to speak Swedish. He taught English in China and Japan. One day he was found unconscious and taken to the hospital. When he woke up he had forgotten who he really was. He identified himself as Johan Ek who only spoke Swedish. He did not recognize himself or his family members. He was not the same person as he was before. So, we can partially agree to Locke that we remain the same person throughout our lives except in extreme conditions like brain damage or memory loss or Alzheimer’s