Pasteboard Masks, I

What is man that You are mindful of him
Psalms 8:4

I've been reading lately, in communities here as well as in other media (remember 'books'?) about the so called personality changes which may or may not take place in a person with multiple sclerosis. It is certainly a subject which, if nothing else, resists unambiguous conclusions.

I guess the most effective way to approach the question would be through the evaluation of another person, well known to the examiner on a long term basis, both before and after MS.

Unfortunately, no such person is available to me.

I turn therefore to myself--an interrogation more likely to cast shadows than light.

Walker Percy once wrote an essay about self knowledge in which he posited a scenario wherein a certain man is reading through his horoscope, and the more he reads, the more he thinks Yeah, that really is just like me. Of course, the punchline is that he ultimately discovers he is reading the wrong zodiac sign. He is reading Capricorn, not Leo. The man turns, therefore, to the proper sign and, well, how about that, this one is just like him as well!

So who are we to begin with? That's the first problem. What are we like, how can we accurately describe personality?

Percy went on to describe all the things an observer may be able to objectively state about the planet Jupiter by looking through a telescope, observing the atmosphere, counting moons, appreciating the chemical composition, the data of astronomy. And yet faced with himself, the man may as well be like Virgo or Taurus, Aquarius or Sagittarius. In short, he knows more of a certainty about a planet over 500 million miles from earth than he can confidently say about himself.

If MS has changed us, therefore, what exactly has it changed us from, and what to?

It occurs to me also that those of us who appear most stable on the outside may actually be the least stable on the inside. Jupiter, for instance, would appear to be a big, solid, mass in orbit, and yet we are really not seeing Jupiter at all, but merely its atmosphere. It is a sort of physical facade.

Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.

Or so said Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick.

How many white whales out there? One alone, or one for each member of the crew, one for each episode in the voyage of life?

I am Hyde, and Jekyll too. But how do I parse out the interplay?

I guess my point is this (yes, I have to guess my own point!): It is difficult enough to lay a finger upon personality to begin with, much less say whether a medical condition can change it.

(more to come in part 2)