A human being consists of many little bags.

What do you think a human is? Who are you?

Imagine: you just ate some bread. Then you are now a few percent bread. Some of it gets expelled, but your cells are also rebuilt with that bread. You are literally a little bit of what you eat.

You are reading now. The information goes from the screen into your mind. When you finish reading this little piece, you are also 0.0000000000001% this text. You carry it with you, like a tiny little bag.

But you are also bigger bags, like your heart, your liver, and your hands.

Or maybe you are, like me, someone who is often emotional. I think I exist largely out of love and sorrow. Those bags are big in me.

If you add everything together—millions, millions, billions of bags—you can make one human out of all those bags. You can also look at it the other way around: if a thought is a small bag you carry with you, sometimes you can choose to throw some bags away or take new memory-bags with you.

What something is is hard to say, because it is so many things at once. But don’t forget that you always have the power to discard bags or carry new ones. You consist of so many things at once, but there is always a you that is a you.

Een mens bestaat uit heel veel zakjes.

Wat denk je dat een mens is? Wie ben jij?

Stel: je hebt net brood gegeten. Dan ben jij nu dus een paar procent brood. Een deel scheid je uit, maar je cellen worden ook weer met dit brood opgebouwd. Je bent dus letterlijk een beetje wat je eet.

Je bent nu aan het lezen. De informatie gaat van het scherm je hoofd in. Als je klaar bent met dit stukje lezen, ben je dus ook voor 0,0000000000001% dit stukje tekst. Dit draag je met je mee, als een soort klein zakje.

Maar je bent ook grotere zakjes, zoals je hart en je lever en je handen.

Of misschien ben je, net als ik, iemand die vaak emotioneel is. Ik besta denk ik vaak voor een groot stuk uit liefde en verdriet. Die zakjes zijn groot bij mij.

Als je alles bij elkaar optelt, miljoenen en miljoenen en miljarden zakjes, kun je van al die zakjes één mens maken. Je kan het ook omdraaien: als een gedachte een klein zakje is dat je meedraagt, kun je er soms voor kiezen om zakjes weg te gooien of nieuwe herinneringszakjes mee te nemen.

Wat iets is, is dus moeilijk te zeggen, omdat het zoveel dingen tegelijk is. Maar vergeet niet dat jij altijd de macht hebt om zakjes weg te doen of nieuwe mee te nemen. Je bestaat uit zoveel dingen tegelijk, maar er is altijd een jij die een jij is.

I am sure you noticed that people who are extremely happy barely ever use numbers in their sentences.

My great-grandmother, probably one of the happiest people who ever walked this planet, only cared about other people and about love. If you asked her how many grandkids she had, she would say: “I have [Name A], I have [Name B]…” followed with a description of who they were, what they loved, or something funny they had done. She wouldn’t even give a number. Saying “There are four” would almost be considered impolite, as if it mattered how many there were.

It’s the equivalent of wearing sunglasses outdoors or listening to music in public: you just don’t do that. You can’t focus on what is actually important.

If I were to go into an unknown room right now, come back, and my mom asked: “What’s in there?” and I replied: “There are four people in it,” she wouldn’t take my judgment seriously for years. She would just go herself. What she wants to know is: Who are they? Do they need anything? And she’s right.

Even now, when I return from a holiday and ramble on about what I did there, there always comes a point when she asks: “How is the plant in your garden doing?” Because that is a living thing, and it’s time to focus on that.

Thinking in numbers is a bit like thinking in calories. You think you’re doing fine, not realizing it’s one of the most unhealthy relationships you can have with food. Then every dinner starts with: “I have 800 calories left for this meal,” stripping away all the fun, all your natural ability to feel whether you actually need food or not. It becomes a self-built prison.

What does time do?

  • Time can pass. Go by.

  • Time shows the difference between things. Between day and night. It is also something that exists between two things.

  • A certain time can pass, but it can also return.

What I find interesting about time is that it actually only shows differences in perspective.

I am now in Europe. I still have to eat dinner. Someone in Australia might already be asleep. Those are two things happening at exactly the same moment. The only difference is perspective.

Life is always leading. Even if your clock runs a bit faster or slower, this eventually bends back again. Spending some time in space and therefore being younger than your twin brother? Impossible. It’s a bit like saying: someone smokes, so they move faster through time, because they will die earlier.