When nothing matters, what defines me?

Everything from my past is gone. And with each day, it becomes more gone. Each day is a day further from crucial events, conversations, and emotions that at some point defined me. The passage of time, the erosion of memory, the inevitability of physical decline and death makes the past irrelevant to today. It is past. Gone. And the links to me today are strands that reach out to me, but are nothing more than paper fingers, drawn on cheap tissue paper. Only I remember my past, and if I forget it, its last remnants will go. The places and the people that have defined me are gone. And I cannot define myself by them.

My past gave me problems to overcome. And with those problems largely solved, what purpose does the past have? I was defined by the problems my past had given me. And now, solved, I have no definition.

I had a relationship when young that defined allot of my path, but it is gone completely, barely a memory. She rightly moved on. I rightly moved on; our child is now an independent adult. The places of my young life that defined my desires, the beach of the Gold Coast, has no effect on me now. I don't surf. If I think about living beachside it is for family reasons, not for my own desire. It doesn't preoccupy or frustrate me.

I could be injured or deregistered and have my surgical work abruptly end. What I do in life would stop suddenly. And with each passing day it would recede into irrelevant history. Even if I survive every career threat, one day I will retire. And as my retired surgeon father says about surgery, "it feels soooo long ago". It will recede into irrelevance. Already I feel I have done more in my career than most. I have nothing to prove. I have proven myself without doubt and could end the arc of my career satisfied.

In the big picture, nothing really matters, only a few people make an impact, and the greater good and the whole society moves forward, and my part is infinitesimal and inconsequential.

I can smile at emotions because I know my emotions aren't real, and emotional connections aren't real things and can be manipulated and reframed. I make my relationships good, choosing good emotions and frameworks, but it also means I am liberated to think that people are optional, the future relationship and role in my life is not guaranteed by their existence or any action and hence neither the people or the connections to them define me.

And so... if I am not defined by the people of my past or the places of my past, or what I have done in the past, because none of it really matters anyway then what defines me?