Identity

I'm not going to get into why I've been pondering identity over the past few days. Those involved in any of it are probably already having a snide laugh, thinking that they've inspired me, or fooled me, or god knows what else.

Everyone has multiple identities, and that's a simple fact. The whole best foot forward, meeting the parents, interview, wearing the dry clean only clothes version of you is a pretty different identity than the version where you're sitting on the couch, wearing the same underwear for three days, watching trashy tv, in the middle of what starts to look like an odd concentration camp for alcohol.

Yeah, deep down it's the same person. Sure. Not arguing there. But there are different parts to any person. Picture it how you want... devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. Id, ego, and superego. Whatever. Point is, everyone knows that there are these component parts that make us up, but nobody likes to think that they might have to deal with anyone else's parts.

Some people who know me will only know one aspect, and that's how I want to keep it. Maybe they know my political work, or my writing, or my health problems, or my sick sense of humour, or my work pimping art, or something else. Maybe they knew me when I was 17, maybe when I was 25. All of those bits come together to form who I am now, but it's only natural to protect yourself against anyone knowing everything.

If somebody else knew everything about me, that might just mean that I'd have to accept all those parts of me. I'd have to get to know myself.

So I don't want you to know everything about me (yet here I am writing all sorts of crap that's stumbling around in my head), but I get a bit offended when you don't tell me everything about you (see previous post about wanting to know you more than you know yourself, etc.). Guess what... we all do it.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm happier with people who openly hide themselves. Don't want me to know who you are? Fine. But don't make a game out of it. You can keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine. We can interact with those secrets tucked under our arms, hoisted in hobo sacks over our shoulders. The parts that we're happy to have public can be friends for what they have in common, not for what's dangling in that tatty hankie at the end of that stick.

So I'm ok with this. Now I just need to convince everyone else to be, too. I find that if you don't prod and pick the scabs of conversations, people tell you the most unexpected things. For most of my friends, the defining moments of confession and conversation came when the pretenses were dropped and that little glimmer of humanity came through. Maybe it dropped out of a hole in the hankie.

We all have things we want to keep hidden, and we all lie to each other and ourselves. There's no point in wasting time worrying about what lies might be out there.