Human beings are obsessed with knowing themselves. A huge amount of money has been made from self-help and amateur psychology books, and there are thousands of websites where the searcher can find out their "personality type," as if personalities can realistically be confined into a given number of categories.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, artistic members of society seem to be more interested in "who they are." Philosophers, writers, poets, painters, and rock stars have attempted to answer that inevitable question: "Who am I?" Maybe this is simply because artistic people (I say from experience!) are often more introspective and emotionally-minded than their more scientific counterparts. Science looks at what we are: the biological, chemical and physical reality of being human. Art looks at who we are: the personal, philosophical, emotional reality of being human.
No wonder so many artistic people go off the rails and die young. It's enough to make anyone depressed.
But, on the other hand, it doesn't have to be like that. Part of being human is having many faces, many identities, many personalities even. Part of being a happy person is learning to live with them. Security doesn't come from being one clearly-defined, cardboard cut-out that can say, "I am X." Security comes from an acknowledgement that humans are pretty complex, but accepting it.
In the past I have been extremely miserable, confused about my identity, tearful and angry. There are quiet aspects to my personality, loud aspects, masculine and feminine aspects... am I clever or stupid, am I artistic or not, am I a good person or a bad person, am I selfish or selfless? And I'm interested in so many things that appear to be conflicting. I became obsessed with analysing my own personality and the personalities of the people around me. Then I realised that all the aspects of my personality are not conflicting, they are just opposite sides of a multitude of coins. They all make me. Me is not one thing; Me is many things.
While identity is confusing and frightening, every human wonders who they are. The teenage years, especially, are a time of coming to grips with the person one is, the depths of one's personality and personalities, realising what one does and does not enjoy doing. I feel as though I have come through that teenage confusion, but many others have not. My only advice is: keep going. You'll get there!
xxx
Yay, more identity musings! It must be contagious!
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about having to 'come to terms' with the many sides of yourself, and that however many faces you feel you may have, they are all you.
For me, I think the problem is not just accepting myself as multifaceted, but distinguishing which of these identities is actually part of me, and which of them are created by aspects of me that are - I'm not really sure how to explain this - 'out of my control'(?)...
There are certain parts of me that ARE me, however conflicting there are, and I accept that. But there are also parts of me that I need to 'get better from', if you know what I mean. And atm I'm finding it hard to differentiate between quite which identities are real, and I want to keep, and which ones aren't part of the REAL me, and need to be ditched or made-over.
That was basically a long-winded way of me saying: I'm a seriously messed up person! :D
xxx