Learning who I really am and how to act that way

A while back it hit me hard that earlier in my life, I lost sight of who I really was in trying to express my uniqueness, while I complained that others lost sight of who they were in conformity. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that it’s two sides of the same coin and that no one side is better than the other. I’ve written things about this before. And it is because I think that I truly have stumbled over something important here.

A standard response that you get from many people when we bring up questions about who we are is: “We know who we are, don’t we?” But do we really? Do our words and actions ring true when we interact with others? Do I really feel that it’s me speaking? Or is it a social mask, constructed from who I think that I ought to be? Made from who I want others to perceive me as? 

I used to be one of those people that said: “I don’t care what anyone thinks.” What I could have added was: “And I really really want everyone to know how much I don’t care what anyone thinks.” In other words, I did care. What I’ve learned is that those that say these things often are the ones that care the most. Often they are, just like I used to be, people that try to project a tough, rebellious image.

Jesus speaks of occupying and/or guarding one’s home on several occasions. One’s home is an obvious reference to one’s mind and one’s life. This, in turn means something very exact. What I mean is that I have noticed, both within myself and others, how often no one is home. The words that I and others say don’t really mean anything. It’s just part of a social game of expectations, appropriateness, perceived wants, needs and desires. There is no genuine connection. 

I want to bring this back to what I said in the beginning. Namely that when we don’t think consciously about who we are and who we truly want to be, not who we want others to perceive us as, metaphorically other characters move into our heads instead. We will let the world, other people, our unconscious reactions to the world and other people and all kinds of irrelevant factors that we are not aware of, shape us into something that we are really not.

I’m probably using a lot of text to say: Stop playing roles, find out who you really are and how to act that way! But I wanted to put this into some kind of perspective.