annoying post where I stop for reflection

I borrowed a book while I was in new York (actually, I borrowed multiple books, but I'm only talking about one at the moment). I just finished it, Reading Lolita In Tehran by Azar Nafisi. I recommend it highly. Throughout the book (a memoir), the author connects her personal experiences during the years she lived in Tehran with the lives of her students and with the books they read. Nafisi was a university professor of English literature, and had a small, close-knit group of female students who met in her home once a week for an extended period of time. She eventually decided she could no longer live under the incredibly invasive Islamic law in place in Iran, and moved with her family to the United States. In the last few weeks before she moved she spent extra time with her "girls," taking pictures and trying to memorize all the little details that would fade when she left. One comment stood out to me:

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place,[...], like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."

I understood entirely what she meant. Moving to Philadelphia is by no means as permanent a transition as her move, but I felt the same sense of urgency when seeing people before I left. I kept thinking "this is the last time I'll see them when we're these people, when I come back we will be entirely different."

As I understand it (from my very limited exposure to Buddhist theory), Buddhists see the self not as a coherent and fixed entity, but rather as a combination of ever-changing physical and mental forces. For Buddhists, there is no stable soul, but rather a chain of causally connected not-selfs that change and adapt and become entirely new while retaining a link to previous combinations of forces. I'm not sure I explained that well, but the book quote and the thinking I had been doing felt like it fit better in that model than any other. Who I was when I last sat on Kristina's couch to watch Friends is me and not-me, because I've had so many experiences since then that have adjusted the way I see the world and myself. Which makes my memories of all of you more precious, because I know that I can't ever get back to who I was a year ago, or six months ago, or last week in New York. Each moment means I'm someone different.

Which is nice, because it means I can reinvent myself a nearly infinite number of times. But is scary, because it means "I" don't really exist at all.

Not sure where I was going with this, but I'm pretty sure I had a point. If you see the point, let me know.