Identity

 

One time during some weekend in the woods at this insane party/get together/thing I was at I asked an older person there "what is one of the most important things you've learned in life so far?" probably because I was bored. They said they'd have to think about it and they'd get back to me on that. To be honest I didn't expect to hear from him again. As I was about to leave on the last day they approached me and said "The most important thing you can do in this life is to be yourself." 

I don't know why he gave this answer. I don't really understand the reasoning behind it. What meaning is there in this world to really hold onto besides just what we've been shown. There's so much manipulation behind belief and meaning. So many people caught on the never ending treadmill of the next dollar, the next promotion, the next step in some ladder that once they've ascended they look down and wonder why they just climbed it. 

 What is the point of being yourself when the self is transient, shifting like water. Though, what is the ocean but a multitude of drops? Who I was a decade ago is not the person I am today, in a lot of ways I've grown in ways I'm proud of, in other ways I'm not I suppose. I think for myself more these days and approach information more critically in some ways. I have a more unique and interesting style, I would say I'm more independent than before and I know a lot more information and skills than before, though I suppose I've also forgotten a lot as well. 

Ways I've changed I dislike: I'm a lot more depressed than before. I feel less motivated, I feel lost, less ambition, no direction, a shattered person, broken and still slowly picking up the pieces and trying to put their life back together. In some ways I'm less confident and in some ways I'm more confident. I think my confidence kind of goes in waves. I think I'm less confident than I was 3 years ago, but more confident than I was 5 years ago. 

Who we are, this sense of self, is somewhat dependent on the culture we are surrounded by and what we associate and sympathize with. I could understand that maybe there is some fundamental aspect to ourselves that is hard to really erase. I've gotten out of some pretty dicey situations that made me question everything I was and honestly, I don't think we ever truly find ourselves because we constantly are creating ourselves and changing, shifting, adding or subtracting different aspects. Falling in love, going through breakups, meeting new friends, getting betrayed, letting people down, letting ourselves down, being loyal, getting a new line of work, moving to somewhere new, undergoing some physical injury or death of a loved one or birth of a child...

I could name so many life events that could trigger complete and utter changes in someones personality and sense of self. There's a quote I've read before that sometimes you just need to break your heart enough until it opens. Maybe these emotionally traumatic events we endure force us to have identity crises because what we thought was stable and meaningful ends up falling through our fingers like sand through an hourglass. Impermanence is everywhere though! The only constant is change! Maybe then there are aspects of ourselves that we can cling to and hold onto, but only once we really get to know who we actually are on a deep core level.

 When the ground is shaking and everything is in flux, maybe we naturally gravitate towards what is truly stable and deep about ourselves, and maybe sometimes this reveals aspects about ourselves that we didn't really know about before. Otherwise, maybe certain stable aspects during an identity crisis get overwritten by whatever it can latch onto in the environment. This is an excellent example of why people join cults for instance, and their base personality is just overwritten by what people call the "cult personality".

Are we just the stories that we tell about ourselves? Should we just attempt to then write the most optimal character in terms of self identity in order to achieve whatever our ambitions are? What is the point of ambitions though when one doesn't actually really know what they really want because they don't know who they are? Who are you, and what do you want? These two concepts can be mutually exclusive, should we attempt to bend how we are perceived and who we are in order to achieve our aims, or should we bend our aims and ambitions to better cater to who we are and how we are perceived as. Perhaps ideally one would say the middle way is where true happiness lies, we meet halfway between what we want and who we really are. 

Forget all this abstract shit. Maybe the only true concept that matters is survival. I don't agree with this statement, it's one thing to survive but its another thing to truly live. Catering your life purely to survive means you might forget to actually live it. You can't live unless your at least surviving maybe, but it just seems like there's some ideas worth living and dying over, and if there isn't then maybe lets just fall into a deep pit of nihilism, nothing matters and conversely if nothing matters then the flip side is everything matters.

 Still nihilism, we are mere specks in the universe that are in the horrible space of having enough divinity to understand that we are but specks and yet not enough to truly find our place within the cosmic framework. Maybe we are but one step in the evolutionary ladder of consciousness and far in the future this will all make sense why it is the way it is, or maybe this is just a story that in the grand scheme of everything is ultimately meaningless or meaningful, again nihilism.

 

I keep saying this on my blog and I've said it before but is love real? Does it actually exist? Is it merely a myth we've constructed? Ok, maybe you could argue that it's a drug (from god? Is there a god or gods? Does it matter? I don't know, I think infatuation and lust sure feels really nice though) but then the myth falls away and it becomes a complicated chemical reaction that merely effects our behavior, but I would argue that maybe even that isn't actually predicated on any truth, love isn't real? Or is it? I don't think it is. Maybe this is just my angst and pain from the breakups I've gone through, the trauma of my childhood, and the interpersonal relationships that have fucked me over that had non-romantic love attached to them. I hope it's angst, I want to see differently, it's utterly depressing to live in this world without such a myth. 

 Who we are and what do we want, if love does exist then it's more important to focus on who we are, but if it's not then its more important to focus on what we want. Maybe the truth is the harmony between who we are and what we want, maybe the truth is merely nobody truly understands what love is, or maybe it's been layered over with so much superficial bullshit that it's hard to scrape away all the layers of lies and deceit, or maybe love is surreal, superreality and transcends ontological layers of what we as humans with our limited sensory and cognitive capabilities can perceive as what truly exists. 

Finding the harmony of who we truly are and what we truly want means we live in the truth of every moment, or something. Maybe this is becoming too neoliberal bay area wook hippie fucking trash speak. I don't know any answers to these questions. Right now I want to say no, I don't want to be enlightened because its a scam, I want to know more, I want to be more cognizant and conscious and present, or maybe more disconnected and fearful, it doesn't matter. Does any of this matter? 

I give up. It's time for the universe to catch me, because I'm falling.

I don't truly know who I am. I don't truly know what I want. I also know who I could be, I also know what I could want. 

Time to take a break from these blogs, I don't know how long. Maybe I'll be back on my bullshit tomorrow or next month.

Goodbye, for now or forever, I don't know.