To Thine Own Self.

Lately I’ve been struggling to express an idea. Or, rather I should say, I’ve been struggling to bring order to a number of ideas which are floating around in my head. I’ve been in a reflective mood lately. This is not always a positive thing, but I’m trying to bring something good out of this mess. So here is an attempt at working it out.

I’m known as a bit of an eccentric. I don’t mind the label, but I’m not exactly excited about it either. As a teenager I always thought individuality was the highest goal. I still think it’s important to be who you are, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized how being true to yourself is: A) impossible; B) an unworthy goal.

The reason for that it is impossible is that who anyone is at any given time is a fluid notion. All the universe is in constant motion. Things, and people, are constantly changing. Even at the most basic molecular level, the body is constantly using up resources and regenerating them at this instantaneous, unconscious and completely unnoticeable rate, so it is technically a truism that I am not who I was when I started to write even this very sentence.

Even though the substance of who I am is constantly changing, there remains some sense of permanent self. Although I am certainly not who I was when I was a baby, I am still somehow exactly who I was when I was a baby. Although it has been 27-years since I thought the thoughts that the child in my baby book is thinking, they are nevertheless my pictures. They were my thoughts. They can belong to no one else.

What I am getting at, is that I am constantly changing. Just as the baby in the photo album is me, the hunched over old lady who I have yet to become is also me. I can no more know the baby in the photo album than I can know the old lady who is yet to come to pass; yet each of these figures are me.

If I am to be true to myself, the question must be asked: to which me must I be true? I have simplified the concept by appealing to the extremes of age, but in truth there are millions of me. The me that is in my mother’s womb; the me on my first day of kindergarten; the me in my Marilyn Manson t-shirt; the me working in the church nursery; the me who has yet to have come to pass… These are greater than distinctions of role or maturation; these are essences of self which are contradictory and complimentary and utterly passing.

It may seem like a trivial point. But it’s an important distinction for me to make. The feelings that I am feeling as I write this have no greater importance than the feelings I felt as a small child. They carry no truer weight than the feelings I will feel tomorrow, or next year, or in sixty years.

To strive to be true to ones’ self is an impossible goal. Self is a fluid concept. If it were possible to perfectly achieve oneness with self in one instant, in the next instant that self would cease to be. It is a meaningless construct; it is as vain a motivation as trying to catch the wind.

The reason that being true to yourself is an unworthy goal is that it is inherently selfish. To seek after self is to put the self before others. To put ones own interests before the interests of others is to assume superiority, to assign inferiority. And yet, on what basis can we assume this superiority? We are all made of the same stuff.

So it is impossible and unworthy to be true to ones self. Assuming this, what other options do we have? It is equally impossible to be duplicitous to ones self. It is equally unworthy to assume inferiority; we are all still made of the same stuff.

We have little choice but to act in accordance with the moment. Whether this be to suit the individual need to or to assuage the needs of the community, we must act in accordance with ourselves as present beings informed by past selves and informing future selves.

Why does this matter? It matters because it strikes to the heart of the question of human motivation. What motivates human beings to continue to be? Why do I continue to live when existence becomes unbearably painful? Why do I voluntarily take on the sufferings of others? Why am I comforted by affection and so crushed by its absence?

There are many times that I question my own answers to these problems. There are moments when I would soon as not cease to be. There are other moments when life seems so full of joy that I can hardly contain the energy beating inside my chest. There are times when I lay on the couch, ignoring even basic physical
needs. Other times, I will push well past the point of exhaustion to do something, virtually anything, that has even a symbolic sort of meaning.

I wanted to write more specifically. Maybe I will soon, but for now my battery is ready to die and I am getting very tired. I will go to bed and maybe write some more tomorrow.