So, like restaurants, our identities evolve through compromise or lack of it. In the end who we are is not defined by our adversities but by how we overcome them.

That’s actually at the very core of evolution.

After all, not all restaurants make it. Not all restaurants last. Not all restaurants are even remembered. Some go extinct, only to be dug up much later if they left some bones in convenient spots.

We all want, at some level, to be remembered. It’s a matter of meaning, that our lives have meaning. And yet, most of us won’t be remembered by anyone other than those we encountered in our short lives, and even then, we are remembered in snapshots of who we were perceived as in the moment.

That snapshot, in turn, helps make them who they are. There are no elastic collisions between humans.