Put another way, we grow to be “materialists”—that is, habitually consumed by thoughts of things in the external environment. Our identity becomes wrapped up in our bodies. We are absorbed by the outer world because that is what those chemicals force us to pay attention to—things we own, people we know, places we have to go, problems we face, hairstyles we dislike, our body parts, our weight, our looks in comparison to others, how much time we have or don’t have … you get the picture. And we remember who we are based primarily on what we know and the things we do.
