[01.16] - Will The Real You/Me Please Stand Up?

If you have a current/former love who fluctuates between passion and psychosis, if you have a talented friend who shows signs of realizing it about thrice a decade, if you think you know yourself well, then suddenly find that your actions don’t match the label, this blog’s for you.

It’s for anyone who wonders if past actions, future goals, and present potential means anything, or if we are defined only by what we do and where we are right now.

The issue of amore seems to crop up too often, but it’s the easiest entry point into this topic, so here we go. Say you date someone wonderful, fantastic, pure carnal perfection. Suddenly they switch; out pop the horns, pitchfork, and spade with which they begin digging their pit of personal damnation. After the meltdown, you vaguely keep in touch, and you (rarely) see a glimmer of the old sweet saint. If you’re like me, you latch onto this redemptive glint and declare it evidence of the former them, the real them.

Finally, my point: The Real You (or Him, or Her). Just what is that? Do other points on the timeline matter at all, or is identity based solely on current actions?

I wonder this in relation to myself, too. I like to think I’m a fairly organized person. Then I glance around my abode. (Newspaper on the floor. Is that my good shirt under the couch? I spy with my little eye, a personal item on the dining table.) Likewise, I claim punctuality (a reputation I fight to maintain while running for the bus, two minutes late). I was these things, once, but moments of embarrassing clarity beg reassessment.

More importantly, more seriously, are deeper identity considerations. For instance, I want to be a writer. Well, obviously I write now, but my goal is to be the kind whose stuff shows up in bookstores, published on something other than dingy newsprint run off on my dusty Samsung printer. I’m reluctant to call myself Writer until a point of significant achievement has arrived. Artists-in-progress and musicians living with their parents way longer than normal may understand where I’m coming from.

I had a breakthrough recently, while chatting with a friend who’d just finished a great role in a play. As we discussed our plans for future fame, we came to an agreement: we’d start referring to ourselves as writer/actor, right then; no waiting for some future point of success.

Though neither of us had tuned recently into a Sunday morning preach-it show, I think we were getting at the same sentiment dancing pastors gasp out between shimmies and kicks; the doctrine of speak-it-into-being.

It’s a concept I’d like to cling to in my view of myself. While I don’t promote every catch-phrase that pours from a slick televangelist’s lips, this idea holds great value in one’s self-view. I know, and support, the ‘if you want to be a writer/actor/singer/inventor of funny hats, write/do your thing’ concept. But there’s something about claiming the future you want while you’re on the road to getting there. There’s similar value in remembering past personal successes; if I did well before, I’ll do well again.

When it comes to other people’s personalities, I’d rather let go of past pleasures and hold back on pre-emptive optimism, letting current actions paint current (though changeable) portraits. For myself, claiming the future me offers a confidence boost most of us could use. And I actually have agency in whether it comes to pass.

-ja**ly