(the pattern remembers itself)
On Molecular Identity, Midsummer Light, and the Information That Persists
I was reading again about the Ship of Theseus—the old legend where the ship, long after Theseus’ voyage has ended, is repaired plank by plank until no piece of the original remains. And yet it is still called the same ship, revered in the harbor, the name still carved into the stern. The philosophical puzzle unfolds from there: if you gathered all the replaced planks, the nails and masts and ropes that were swapped out and built a second ship from them, which one is truly the Ship of Theseus? The one that stayed in motion, changing all the while? Or the one built from the original parts, restored but static?
It’s a thought experiment that reveals something profound—not about ships, but about identity. What defines continuity? Is it the material—the wood, the steel, the cells, the proteins? Or is it the information—the arrangement, the architecture, the rhythm of movement through time? What if we are not defined by what stays, but by what persists through change? What if the self isn’t a thing at all, but a pattern—a dynamic form remembered well enough to reconstruct itself as it unfolds?
This question follows me, especially today. I’m in Sweden, on the longest day of the year. Midsummer. The sun barely sets. There’s a strange clarity in this light that lingers deep into the night, a brightness that feels less like illumination and more like invitation. I think about my own ship—my self—and how many of its planks have changed. There’s no original vessel left, not really. But something—some orientation—has continued through every rebuild.
In 2008, I took a photograph that I now understand as a kind of fold. Shot on medium format film, black and white, three exposures layered on one frame. One version of me looks left. Another right. One faces forward, half-seeing the lens. I called it an experiment at the time, but I see now that I was documenting a quantum state—a moment of superposition, undecided, becoming. I was in graduate school. I was thinking about the future. I didn’t yet have the language, but I could feel the tension of iteration. A new direction was opening. Not away from anything, not against anything, but toward something I didn’t yet have words for. Something I could only feel in the architecture of myself: a redesign in motion.
Even then, something deep in me knew: the ship had to change. I needed a stronger hull, better sails. Not because I had failed, but because I was sailing into unfamiliar seas. The waters I was being called toward were rougher, more chaotic, more demanding. And more beautiful. I wanted to design for them. I wanted to become the kind of vessel that could move with curiosity and resilience through that open ocean.
We are all navigating a sea of spacetime—threading our vessels through events and moments that stretch across dimensions. Each decision, each transition, shifts the course. The sea isn’t just metaphorical—it’s real, a fabric we move through. And so we build accordingly. Not for permanence, but for precision, balance, adaptability. We don’t just float in time—we sail through it.
And the storms of life—those sudden ruptures in our local spacetime—can bash us hard against the rocks. Illness, grief, endings, even joy that asks too much of us—they all crack the hull. They force us to rebuild. These moments feel like chaos, but they are also instruction. They teach us where our framing was too thin, where our keel was misaligned, where our ballast was wrong. They reshape us not by design, but by necessity. And still, if we choose to, we sail on.
The further I go, the more I understand how profoundly our biology mirrors this process. Our bodies are in constant replacement. Proteins fold and unfold, marked by time and function. Cells replicate, recycle, dissolve, are born anew. The brain doesn’t hold memory in some fixed vault—it reactivates it, re-encodes it, remaps it every time we remember. Even the molecules that underlie our sense of self are temporary. And yet—we feel continuity. We feel us. Not because the materials endure, but because the information does. Because the pattern reasserts itself, again and again, like a melody carried by changing instruments.
Information is the thread. Not just in biology, but everywhere. From DNA to stars to spoken word, it is information that allows structure to persist across time and change. The self is not a structure. It is a symphony of codes playing out across the body, the brain, the stories we tell. What we choose to remember becomes what we choose to be. And what we choose to rebuild becomes the next chapter in that continuity.
We are not merely what we inherit—we are what we reiterate. The architecture of self is blueprinted in memory, but built in choice. Every new tool we pick up, every skill we earn, every moment of deep listening alters the grain of the wood we sail with. We gather new materials in every port. We replace our fasteners, upgrade our instruments. The ocean may be unfamiliar, but we learn to sail it by becoming the vessel that can. And if we choose wisely, we are not just sailing—we are discovering.
For me, that’s the dream. Science, art, building a company, writing posts like this one—they are all modes of navigation. Every risk I take is an invitation to a new sea. Every failure is a cracked rib that teaches me something about stress and flexibility. I’ve rebuilt mid-journey more times than I can count. And every time, I feel a little more like a ship that knows how to be rebuilt. This, too, is a kind of information: a confidence encoded in experience.
And not everyone is sailing the same ocean. Some bring their cargo to port cities, enrich the coast, create beauty and stability for others. Some hold the light so others can find the dock. Some rebuild where they are. Some drift with purpose; some stay. There is no wrong way to move. The tide comes for all of us. And the choice to sail—or to rest—is its own form of wisdom.
But for me, this solstice sun, this long light that bends through the Swedish sky, reminds me that even when I cannot see the horizon, I am still guided. That the fold continues. That the ship is not finished, and never will be.
Lately, I’ve felt lost again. Like I’m mid-journey with no shore in sight. But I return to this thought, which I wrote once in a quiet moment, and which keeps returning to me now, like a beacon:
Only the ones who’ve felt lost at sea can know what landfall means.