"What makes a person "the same" person across life's tectonic upheavals of circumstance and character? Amid the chaos and decay toward which the universe inclines, we grasp for stability and permanence by trying to carve out a solid sense of self in our blink of existence. But there is no solidity. Every quark of every atom of every cell in your body had been replaced since the time of your first conscious memory, your first word, your first kiss. In the act of living, you come to dream different dreams, value different values, love different loves. In a sense, you are reborn with each new experience."

Beauty magnetizes curiosity and wonder, beckoning us to discover — in the literal sense, to uncover and unconceal — what lies beneath the surface of the human label. What we recognize as beauty may be a language for encoding truth, a memetic mechanism for transmitting it, as native to the universe as mathematics — the one perceived by the optical eye, the other by the mind's eye.

There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives