St Anselm's Senior Common Room, Late Morning
Outside the windows a determined wind had begun pursuing leaves across the college grounds with administrative intensity.
Professor Quillibrace sat by the fire reading quietly.
Miss Elowen Stray was making notes.
The peace endured for several pleasant minutes.
Then Mr Blottisham entered carrying an old leather suitcase.
Quillibrace looked up.
He stared at the suitcase.
Then at Blottisham.
Then back at the suitcase.
"...should I ask?"
Blottisham smiled triumphantly.
"No need."
"I see."
"I have solved identity."
Miss Stray looked interested.
"The entire thing?"
"Completely."
He lowered the suitcase carefully onto the table and patted it.
"There."
Silence.
Quillibrace regarded the suitcase.
"...identity is in the luggage."
Blottisham nodded.
"Exactly."
Quillibrace removed his spectacles and closed his eyes briefly.
"I had hoped for a quieter morning."
Blottisham sat down.
"The matter is perfectly obvious."
He opened the case slightly and peered inside with satisfaction.
"People possess identities."
"Mm."
"They search for themselves."
"Mm."
"They protect who they are."
"Mm."
"So naturally identity must be something one has."
He tapped the suitcase.
"Rather like this."
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
"We do speak that way."
"Of course we do," said Blottisham.
"We ask people to find themselves."
"We do."
"We worry about losing ourselves."
"Yes."
"We search for our true identity."
Blottisham leaned back.
"So identity is simply something one possesses."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"And thus the inherited picture quietly appears."
He counted on his fingers.
"Individuals possess identities."
Blottisham nodded.
"Correct."
"Identity exists as a stable object beneath change."
"Obviously."
"Experiences accumulate around this identity."
"Yes."
"And authentic living involves discovering or expressing the identity one already possesses."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"Exactly."
Quillibrace looked at him for several moments.
"Mr Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Where precisely is this identity located?"
Blottisham blinked.
"...inside me."
"More specifically."
Blottisham frowned.
"My memories."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Memories change."
"Oh."
"My personality then."
"Personality shifts across situations."
"Oh."
"My body."
"Bodies transform continuously."
"Oh."
"My values."
"Values themselves emerge and alter through relationships and experience."
Blottisham stared.
"Oh dear."
Miss Stray looked up from her notebook.
"So whenever we attempt to locate identity as a stable thing..."
"...it seems to retreat elsewhere."
"Quite."
Blottisham looked suspiciously at the suitcase.
Miss Stray was already writing rapidly.
"And if identity existed independently of relations..."
She looked up.
"...relationships would merely reveal what was already there."
Quillibrace nodded.
"But friendships reshape possibilities."
"Oh."
"Communities alter self-understanding."
"Oh."
"Languages open and close ways of construing experience."
"Oh no."
Blottisham sank lower into his chair.
"So identity does not simply express itself through relations."
"No."
"It seems to emerge through them."
"Precisely."
Silence settled over the room.
The wind rattled the windows.
Blottisham stared at the suitcase as though it had quietly betrayed him.
Quillibrace leaned back.
"Suppose instead identity is not a possession."
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"It becomes something continually actualised through organised relations."
"Yes."
"Not something one has..."
"...but something one becomes."
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
Blottisham remained motionless for some time.
Eventually he spoke.
"I have had a troubling thought."
Quillibrace looked unsurprised.
"I was waiting for it."
Blottisham frowned deeply.
"If identity is not something one carries around..."
He glanced nervously at the suitcase.
"...what exactly have I packed?"
Quillibrace considered this carefully.
"Two sandwiches, Mr Blottisham."
A pause.
"And what appears to be a sock of uncertain historical significance."
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