The Guitar of Theseus

I groggily rolled out of bed in my tiny apartment and stumbled through the living room/dining room/kitchen. Just months earlier I took a big risk on myself, moved out of my previous apartment with roommates and signed a lease on a place of my own.

At 23-years-old I’d never paid so much rent in my life, and I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to keep the apartment on my minimal salary as a struggling self-employed magician.

I couldn’t afford the gas money to go on a date – I needed that money to get to gigs. I wouldn’t even buy a new CD from my favorite band, rice with shredded cheese was my go-to meal and, when my friends invited me out to dinner or karaoke nights, I only ever ordered water, hoping no one would notice how broke I was.

The apartment was so minimal I didn’t bother putting my glasses on most of the time. Still, I loved having my own place.

Across the room I admired my acoustic guitar hanging on the wall. Without my glasses it was fuzzy, but still beautiful. It was my most cherished and definitely most expensive possession: a cedar-top Ovation electric-acoustic guitar I’d purchased just a few years earlier after driving a tough negotiation with the seller, out of necessity.

In those early, lonely days of my career I often found comfort in that guitar, quietly playing and singing to myself hoping not to disturb the neighbors just on the other side of the paper-thin walls. That guitar was my happy place, and I began most days by admiring it before starting the coffee.

But on this particular morning I noticed something within the blurry shape was different. Squinting the guitar finally came into focus, and my body instantly flooded with panic:

The bridge had snapped completely off of the body and was dangling by the strings.

Negotiation

After the initial shock worse off I searched online for Ovation’s customer service number, only to discover their international headquarters and warehouse was in Connecticut, just an hour from where I was living at the time. If I brought the guitar to them in person they’d be happy to take a look at it.

I showed up at their door an hour later, frazzled and desperate.

The guys were super nice, bringing me into the warehouse and showing me around. I enjoyed the tour, but my mind was stuck on the shattered image of my prized instrument.

“Can you take a look at this, please?”

He opened the case and shook his head,

“Unfortunately this isn’t a clean break. It took a good portion of the cedar top with it. We’ll have to replace the whole top.”

“Okay…” I said.

“It’ll take about 8 weeks and cost $300,” he continued.

“What?!” I blurted out.

“This guitar is outside its 2-year full warranty, but still within its 10-year limited warranty. So it’ll be $300 to fix it, and we’re pretty backed up at the moment.”

I didn’t have $300 to spare. Thinking fast, I leverage my crude-but-developing negotiation skills and countered:

“I know it’s out of warranty. But it’s only a few years old and never taken out of the house. Are you telling me Ovation’s quality standard is their guitars might snap in half after just a few years?”

“Of course not.”

“Great. Then you’ll stand behind it and fix it?”

There was a long pause.

“Sure kid, we’ll fix it. But it’ll take 8-10 weeks.”

Fine with me. I mean, it wasn’t really – I’d be without a guitar – but what could I do?

“Just don’t change the neck,” I insisted. “It’s my favorite neck on any acoustic guitar I’ve ever played. It’s very unique and the reason I bought it.”

“No problem,” he said. “We’ll just replace the top.”

Waiting

Six weeks later they called me:

“Hey, so, it turns out the top on your guitar was from right before we switched over to a new body type, and our new machines don’t attach the new tops to the older body you have, so we need to replace the body also.”

I wasn’t thrilled, but what could I do?

“Just don’t touch the neck,” I reminded him.

“You got it, kid.”

Four weeks later they called to tell me my guitar was ready. I eagerly jumped in the car; it had been a long and very lonely 2+ months.

“Here you go!”

He brought the case over, set it on the table, and dramatically opened it like a Bond villain displaying a case of gold bars. I ran my fingers across the top, dripping with anticipation.

“Take a seat and give it a whirl,” he said.

I removed the guitar from its case, sat down, and fretted a chord (Asus2, my favorite chord, to be precise). But before I even strummed once, my heart sank.

“This neck feels different.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. So, yeah. Turns out the way we used to put necks on the bodies doesn’t work with our new machines, so we had to replace the neck, too.”

I was boiling.

“I said under no circumstances were you to touch the neck. It was my favorite thing about the guitar. The only thing I cared about.”

“I know,” he said. “But there were no options at that point, and we were halfway through the job.”

Then the strangest thing happened… my philosophy training kicked in.

When Is a Ship No Longer a Ship?

Imagine a ship sailing across the ocean for a long stretch of time. Eventually one of its wooden planks rots, and must be replaced with a new one.

Is it still the same ship?

Most people’s intuition is yes, it’s the same ship, because replacing a single plank does not change the ship itself.

But what happens when, over time, half of the ship’s original planks have been replaced. What then? This is tougher to answer, but most agree it is still the same ship, admittedly having gone through significant repairs.

Now imagine it finally arrives on the other side of the ocean and pulls in to dock, every single one of the ship’s original planks having rotted and been replaced.

Is the ship that ends the journey the same as the one that began it?

My Guitar That Wasn’t

“…and we were halfway through the job.”

I burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You replaced the top, the body, and the neck, is that right?”

“Yeah…”

“So, you built me a brand new guitar?”

His face contorted.

“Hm. I guess we did.” Then he smiled, “For what it’s worth, if we were putting that guitar, with that top, that neck, and that body, in a store for sale, it would easily retail at over $2000. That’s a helluva guitar you’re holding there!”

And truly, it is.

Change Over Time

The question(s) posed by the Ship of Theseus have plagued philosophers for thousands of years and speak directly to our concerns about identity.

If a thing changes over time, as all things do, when can it be said to be a totally new thing? How much has to change, and how quickly, for it to be something entirely new rather than just a new version of something old?

And what if instead of a thing, we are talking about a person?

You change over time, physically and emotionally. Some of these changes happen naturally, like our cells dying and growing. Other times we have accidents that scar and permanently alter our physical body. Emotionally we change as a result of aging, often unintentionally in reaction to experiences, and sometimes intentionally as a product of self-reflection and personal development strategies.

Ask anyone, “Are you the same person you were ten years ago?” and they’ll say no, they’re different in drastic ways.

Ask the same person, “Do you think you’ll be drastically different ten years from now?” and almost everyone says, “No, I think I’ve mostly settled into who I am.”

These results repeat at every age and stage of life (read more here).

We have this incredible ability to view who we used to be as a very different sort of being from who we might one day become. It’s scary to consider that who we are now, in the present moment, is going to be replaced.

I have no illusions that my guitar is the same one I once owned. I miss that guitar terribly, and mourned it for some time. But I also love my new guitar, in a different way, for its unique qualities.

You are imperfect, and will always have parts in need of repair. Don’t be so afraid of change that you try to stop it, because you can’t. You will change, one way or another.

If the Ship of Theseus never had its rotted planks replaced, it still would have changed: it would have fallen apart and sank into the ocean.

It’s better to make it to shore.