Just be yourself, they tell me, over and over and over again. However, this is no answer to my issues, but rather, raises more questions than I can even contemplate. What really is the determining factor of who I am? To be forthright, I have no idea. It seems this question will be an everlasting mystery, but nevertheless, my life revolves around who I want to be versus who I am. Am I the mask, the persona, that I display, even unconsciously at times? Am I what others think of me? Or am I how I act when I'm alone and uninhibited? Am I only truly myself those few seconds that my mind wanders before and after slumber? Or am I comprised of all my emotions, my reactions, or my experiences? Am I who I love? If my name was a word in the dictionary, what would be my definition? As the song,
Some Nights asks, what do I stand for? These infinite questions I have pondered, that have floated through my conscious and subconscious, have no answer.
This is partly due to all the varying possibilities as how the question may be addressed, and partly due to the ever changing sense of self as each moment passes. Every moment that goes b
y I am a different version of myself, even if only slightly. Every advertisement, movie, magazine and book that I encounter, watch, or read changes me. Often, little things, like the speech "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God" can dramatically alter a person's entire outlook on life. All these factors are a part, big or small, of who I am. However, I am more what I want to be, what I work to be, what I aspire to be, than anything else. Only I can connect the dots.
I like how you posed a lot of questions! Also, the song Some Nights really is a good song that reflects these questions. I agree that a sermon like Jonathan Edwards' may play a big role in altering lives, such as what he did with many of the Puritans in his time, but it is ultimately what the individual feels like he or she should become that determines their identity.
ReplyDeleteThis post was really eye-opening and made me question how do people define themselves? I think because it is so hard people choose not to think about it. I actually read in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" that it is statistically proven that strangers who walk into your room have a more accurate scope of who you are than your closest friends. Just something to think about alongside your questioning of what defines you. :)
ReplyDeleteThat was actually really poetic (I know it's not a poem). You're right, how does a person describe themselves? I like how you put into words what can be really abstract at times. I think you are (not necessarily you exactly) who you aspire to be, and not how you are at any one second, if that makes any sense.
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