The Fireman

by Joe Hill

We are taught to think of personality as a singular, private possession. All the ideas and beliefs and attitudes that make you you—we are raised to believe them a set of files stored in the lockbox of the brain. Most people have no idea how much of themselves they store off-site. Your personality is not just a matter of what you know about yourself, but what others

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know about you. You are one person with your mother, and another with your lover, and yet another with your child. Those other people create you—finish you—as much as you create you. When you’re gone, the ones you’ve left behind get to keep the same part of you they always had.”

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