I try to live my life in such a way as to show others not only how to have fun and be happy, but also how to be  free, not only in the sense of personal liberty but also in liberation from clinging and from preference, and I hope to die someday in such a way as to show others how to do that fearlessly, gracefully, and compassionately as well.  But for now, the best way to live one's life, I believe, is to give up the notion of personal identity and to further accept the fact that our own existence is not an individual possession but a shared commodity.

The contemporary philosopher Derek Parfit once wrote, "When I believed that my own existence was such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster and faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."

Although his death will break the more direct relations between his present experiences and future experiences, Parfit maintains they will not break various other relations. Some people will remember him. Others may be influenced by his writing, or act upon his advice. Memories that connect with his memories, thoughts that connect with his thoughts, actions that connect with his intentions, will persist after he is gone, just inside different bodies.

"This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me," he has written. "Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad."

I like the thought that we all exist among a communal network of memories and neurons, nor resident in any one individual but among many. The Internet has expanded that network beyond the organic to a matrix of servers and routers and computers, as perceived by the minds, memories, and imaginations of legions.

In this way, Water Dissolves Water, which has documented some seven years of my life now, sometimes faithfully and honestly, sometimes not so much, has become an extension of my "self" and a portal though which I have become a part of you, and you of I. And it matters not that some events have been omitted and others embellished to make me look as good as possible, as regardless of whether the facts on the ground are accurately portrayed or not, the thoughts are still mine and therefore an expression of "me." Even when I quote others or outright plagiarize those more articulate individuals (it's happened), it only further blurs the line between others, you and I.

When I'm dead and gone, these words and this blog - and your mental impression of my words and this blog - will be no less an "I" than this sack of bones that I now call "me."