Recently, I StumbleUpon an article whose premise is solely that we aren't whom we think we are. You should be responding to this particular premise as "NO DUH" and if you aren't, well, you'll probably never catch up.
The article, which I can no longer find, unfortunately, posits that we are a combination of various influences we have through our lives (media, parents, friends, yada yada yada).
The article seemed to forget some very important factors on the people we think we are. There are aspects of ourselves we don't like. We use a mask on ourselves, even as we use a myriad of masks to the various socials situations we find ourselves in. We really aren't defined by the things in which we are subject to, anyway; those things just influence our judgement over what all it is that we do.
Naturally, the question is begged: are we what we do? Are baseball players just baseball players? Is that who they are and who they will ever be? Maybe in our memories, maybe in some books/websites of statistics, but in terms of how they are defined as a person, that is a minor, surface facet that makes up for, mostly, their physical identity, not so much their self.
Are we our names? Obviously not. Names are designations to tell each of us apart while giving us the illusion of personalizing our family as to be our own, and not of society on the whole. We are rather territorial about our families, are we not?
Our self, who we are, is far from a simple explanation and there is no true formula to describe each individual's self as we all are different, inside and out, repressed suppressed or expressed, both from the influence of outside influences and our own genetic influences.
We are masks. The best, and only real solution for us to be happy with ourselves, is to find the mask that we feel suits us best when we are alone at night, contemplating ourselves, our relationships, and the world in general. That is the mask we should hold strong to, because we will never truly be one with true selves, mainly because our true selves contain things that we don't like, from a social stand point or not, religious stand point or not. We don't like ourselves, and we never will.
