The Birth of Self

May 1, 2025 | By Emma Ventresca BF ‘26

John William Waterhouse, The Soul of the Rose, 1855

“You’re not yourself anymore,” a close friend said to me over dinner.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, you’re just not you anymore.”

After friends repeatedly telling me that I was “no longer myself” during my second semester at Yale, I had to pause. Like many college students, I had a difficult first semester. I was shocked to see the marked difference between my “high school self” and my “freshman” self. My grades, love of athletics, and academic interests all stayed the same, yet something I could not quite identify changed. Even more frightening to me was my uncertainty about this “new self” and whether or not my “old self” would ever return.

The fundamental desire to understand oneself is at the heart of what it means to be human: Can we ever stop being who we are, either by choice or because of our circumstances?

At the moment of conception, a unique human being is created. Though a human heart is only the size of a pinhead at five weeks of gestation, that same heart will grow to the size of a fist by the time the child reaches adulthood. Fingerprints start forming around ten weeks of gestation and will be different for every person, even for twins. Humans develop their most defining physical characteristics in the womb—legs, arms, eyes, ears, and even reproductive systems. It only seems logical then that when we are born, if left unharmed, we carry that same body with us throughout the rest of our lives.

Well, not exactly.

Every seven to ten years, the human body has replaced thirty trillion cells, the equivalent of an entire human body. [1] While some neurons may persist for the duration of one’s life, the vast majority of our organs have a turnover rate well within a few months.

The constant death and regeneration of cells in our bodies does not mean that we change on an ontological level. The experiences I had from ages seven through seventeen—from friendships to sports to summer vacations—did not disappear nor fail to inform my freshman-year self both physically and mentally. But I did not look the same. I had grown a little over a foot and had thankfully opted for a half-up-half-down hairstyle instead of my poorly-cut bangs.

In other words, my outward appearance or traits—my accidents in metaphysical terms—had changed over these ten years, just as it had in the nine months between my conception and birth. My pinhead-sized heart grew, my fingers and toes became more distinct, and I developed the strength to kick in my mother’s womb. Though my appearance and capabilities at any age—one second after conception, one year after birth, ninety-nine years into life—are continuously changing, I remain a human being. Even if I lack a physical trait characteristic of human beings but can survive on my own or with medical assistance, I still remain a human being.

Some scientists attempt to separate human beings from human persons, claiming that it is “interpersonal bonds” which elevate a member of the homo sapien classification to the level of a “person” worthy of legal rights and protections. In other words, proponents of this theory of personhood see an accident—a transient quality, the ability to relate—as not simply a prerequisite but the sole factor that separates human beings from human persons. In a world where relational ability is the litmus test for humanity, the most vulnerable—elderly with dementia, men and women on ventilators, children with severe developmental challenges, and babies in the womb—are left out of the human family. However, under the view that all human beings—regardless of accidental features—are worthy of legal protections, every human being is a person, and every person is a human being.

Of course our biological makeup and capacity to communicate is vital to our classification as members of the same species; but it is not a sufficient definition because of the nonessential, changeable nature of accidents.

So what does it mean to be human? To put it simply, being human requires “humanness,” or the essence of being human.

Aristotelian metaphysics provides us some insight into the idea of essence as it pertains to human beings:

The essence of each thing is that which it is said to be per se. "To be you" is not "to be cultured," because you are not of your own nature cultured. Your essence, then, is that which you are said to be of your own nature. [2]

Aristotle’s definition of essence as essential, intrinsic aspects that make a thing itself points to something greater than age, height, or development as the defining characteristics of human nature. Aristotle concedes that accidents are the means by which we identify the essence of an object but makes a strong exception in one very important case: the human soul.

Though Aristotle differentiates between essence—the “is-ness” of a thing—and substance of an object—its unchangeable reality which exists independently from the accidental features—he highlights that the essence of a human being is the same as its substance. “Humanness” then is not contingent on anything which happens to the accidents; the “personhood” that some want to withhold from the most vulnerable is extended to every being with DNA from two human parents regardless of circumstance. This unalterable feature which Aristotle categorizes as a human’s “humanness” is not the human body but the human soul. Since the soul is the substance of a human being, it cannot change in the sense that its “soulness” cannot change. If my soul’s “soulness” could morph into another’s “soulness” or disappear entirely, the human being would cease to exist as such.

So what does it mean then to “be a different person?” Applying Aristotle’s definitions of substance and accidents to the individual as opposed to homo sapiens writ large, who I am cannot change, or I cease to be me. Of course my soul is of the same nature as every other human being’s, but that does not mean I can exchange it or change it to a degree where it is no longer “myself.” From the moment of conception, the substance of Emma Ventresca will always remain the same. What happens to us by choice or circumstance can affect our souls, but it can never deprive us of who we were, are, and always will be.

But even when some of the world’s heaviest weights—guilt, regret, trauma, disappointment—give us no choice but to buckle under their weight, who we are stays the same. Our most painful memories can never strip us of our identity and dignity. Suffering may affect how we feel or behave, our accidental features, but it can never change who we are in our innermost being.

I wish that I understood, curled up on my floor with my childhood album, that I would always be the little girl in those photos.

Of course, I have found new interests, made new friends, and changed some of my beliefs in the past two decades. I have experienced greater struggles and also greater joys. Though none of these developments will intrinsically change who I am, I think of them each as causes of transformation—becoming a fuller version of myself.

Transformation is a “coming into” ourselves, a metamorphosis rather than discrete change that fundamentally alters who we are. In the words of philosopher and theologian Karl Rahner, “True 'becoming' must be conceived as something 'becoming more', as the coming into being of more reality, as an effective attainment of a greater fullness of being.” What it means to ‘become’ oneself “must be understood as a real self-transcendence, a surpassing of self or active filling up of the empty.” Who I was, am, and always will be was created in a fraction of an instant. Just like every other human being, I started the journey through life as a pinprick in the vastness of the cosmos, a body with accidental features infused with my substance, my soul. Who I was in this moment—even my existence—was imperceivable to all other beings on the earth, even myself.

Two decades later, I am still the same wondrous, messy mystery, discovering what brings me fulfillment and stumbling along the way. I have not “transformed” out of myself by growing a few inches taller or a few years wiser; I have only come closer to who I truly am.

The dust has now settled since my freshman year. Now a safe distance away, I can objectively survey the past. From this vantage point, it is difficult for me not to see life as a glorious unfolding, each moment, both the bad and the good, making room for growth and peeling back layers of my own soul I had never encountered. In fact, every human person, whether he sees it in the moment or needs the help of retrospect, steadily moves toward the same climax: transformation into the fullest version of himself.

[1] Donavyn Coffey. Does the Human Body Replace Itself Every 7 Years? 2022.

[2] Aristotle. Metaphysics, 1029b.