The Ideal Self

Musings about new beginnings and gender identities

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to begin anew, and the constraints surrounding new beginnings.

Unidentified, Two Assemblies, from Cave 224, 4th-6th century, stucco with pigment, 33 ¹⁄₂ x 30 in. (85.1 x 76.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.

The human conception of time varies across and within cultures. In many cultures, including our own, time is segmented into varying groups, from seconds to minutes to hours to days to months to years, and so on. Most of us accept and adhere to this segmentation— it’s necessary for our survival in this capitalist system, but these definitions of time are also a way to categorize, define, and connect with one another. Time scoops us up into age categories, generational categories, and drags us along its pre-defined cultural timeline, which looks something like this:

Born—baby—toddler—school-aged—tween—teen—young adult—adult—middle-aged—elderly—old.

And then there are the things we are supposed to do along th…