Peanut Butter Banana

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Don’t be yourself

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the notion of self. By self I mean the feeling of existence, the feeling of “I am someone”. Sometime last year it occurred to me that words like, ‘herself’ or ‘himself’, imply ownership. When you look at the word, ‘HERself’, the word seems to say that the self belongs to her. Why the implication of ownership? The implication of ownership suggests that ‘self’ is something that is outside of us. When you look at the mention of ‘self’ in other aspects of speech ‘self’ is usually suggested to be something that is divorced from our actually being. For example, when we say something like, “I need to work on my self esteem”. The idea of self esteem alone means that we can actually make opinions and judgements about our ‘self’. Who exactly is making these judgments? How is it that we as people are able to look at our ‘self’ as if it were something completely separate from us? These questions sparked something in my mind that made me want to look closer at this feeling of “I am someone”.

What makes up a ‘self’? How do I know that I am someone? One thing I noticed is that my thoughts play a huge part in solidifying my feeling of existence. It is almost as if I create myself in my thoughts, identifying with everything I see or hear. Usually I’ll remember a time in the past when I’ve done something or said something and attribute that thought to something that is currently happening or that I believe will happen. For example, say I think back to a time when I was in a social situation and I felt awkward and didn’t talk much, I might think to myself, “well I’m obviously a shy person.” Continuing with the same example, say I get invited to another social situation I might project and image of myself going to this social gathering and attribute what I did at the past social setting to what I may do in the future one. By thinking about what might happen I’ve created an expectation and usually play into that expectation. As a result my thoughts and projections of what has already happened and what may happen affect my actions. Now that my actions are reinforcing the idea that I am a shy person it has become a characteristic of my “self”.

I find that the same way I create a “self” for myself (for lack of a better word), I  create selves for other people in the same way. When we see other people we interpret who they are based on how they look, the way they dress, the way the speak, the content of their discussions, essentially anything that can be perceived by my senses can be added to my interpretation of a person, thus my perception of their “self”. I think that when we do that to another person were are putting them in a box so to speak. We don’t allow ourselves or each other room to change and experience life to an infinite degree because we are so hung up on  mental labels.

  We hear and say things like, “be yourself” “I’m just being myself” “be an individual” or “be unique.” It appears to me that having a “self” is very limiting. Let’s say I have concluded that I am, female, not very smart, shy, and artistic. If that is what I perceive my “self” to be I’ve just brought about a number of limitations to my life. If I believe that I am not very smart I might not apply for university or read books, thus missing out on that possible life experience. If I believe that I am shy then I may not attend social gatherings. If I believe I am artistic I might spend the majority of my time creating art but never play any sports. This is obviously just a general idea, the selves that I believe we create are more complex. It seems that each events that occur in our daily life get stored up our minds and helps to solidify our feeling of existance. The thing is, we don’t have to hold on to ever event that has ever happened to us, do we? 

If I were to take away all the labels what would I be left with? Would I still have a self? Maybe we would be able to do whatever we please without self judgment and labeling holding us down. The point I’m trying to make is that perhaps we should stop “being our self” and just…be. 

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