Oh yes, I"m a great pretender
When I went to audition this week, the people I met were a more philosophical crowd than the typical band type. One of the subjects brought up was how people don't really have a specific personality, that that personality changes depending on the people you are around. You'd act differently with your parents than with your friends than with your coworkers. The conclusion that was reached was there there was no "true" self, that who we were is a combination of all those personas.
I disagree. There is one distinct self, one that only we know, and that is who we really are. Karen Moning, the author of the Fever Series, actually hit on something pretty deep in her smut-posing-as-romance-literature when she explored a hidden part of you where only you can reach, a certain loneliness that is realized only when you are an infant, when you arrive into this world, and when you die. We come into this world alone, and we leave alone. That part is who we are. The person we are when we are by ourselves is our true self. Everything else is a learned behavior based on the rewards and punishments in our environment.
I've learned to lie, to pretend, to become a person that I am not, in order to blend in. While its not flawless, at least I don't raise any red flags. Perhaps its better to be alone than to live a lie, but I can not stand being alone.
Is this the world we live in? Spend our lives pretending in order to be embraced?
I disagree. There is one distinct self, one that only we know, and that is who we really are. Karen Moning, the author of the Fever Series, actually hit on something pretty deep in her smut-posing-as-romance-literature when she explored a hidden part of you where only you can reach, a certain loneliness that is realized only when you are an infant, when you arrive into this world, and when you die. We come into this world alone, and we leave alone. That part is who we are. The person we are when we are by ourselves is our true self. Everything else is a learned behavior based on the rewards and punishments in our environment.
I've learned to lie, to pretend, to become a person that I am not, in order to blend in. While its not flawless, at least I don't raise any red flags. Perhaps its better to be alone than to live a lie, but I can not stand being alone.
Is this the world we live in? Spend our lives pretending in order to be embraced?
I think you are yourself in almost every situation just different facets of that personality unless you outright decide to be someone else.
What it is I think is more of a cloaking mechanism, not a lie. Through surveillance, observation and practice we discern what are the acceptable or useful aspects of our personality in a particular setting and consciously or unconsciously act upon those.
So I do believe that in certain situations it is possible to bring out your full personality or what could be perceived as your true self (although it could also be argued that self, and all selfs are created through the control of the body in modern society so as not even to exist at birth or death since conditioning begins at the moment the body is entered into the world)it is merely up to the body and mind to determine if that other person is accepting or trusted enough.
In that way I believe I have been able to with someone I care very much about.