Monday, January 24, 2011

Creating ourselves.

I was recently faced with a confronting question... Someone asked me "Who are you, really?" And it made me wonder, are we ever able to really define who we are? I think the most difficult thing is that we are so many people embodied in one. We are all someone's child, we are all loved, hated, missed. We are all loud and we are all quiet. We can all be restless, and all need rest.

But looking even deeper into it, we see that we are each someone different to each person we know. I read a book a while ago, Paper Towns by John Green, and it talks about looking through someone's window. It made me realise that the way we look through someone's window is always different to how someone else may look through it.

Whether there are curtains hiding the corners, or the glass is smeared, or there are cracks in their window... through every one, there is a new and different light that comes through for each of us. And so we all have many windows that are looked through when someone sees us and knows us.

The trouble is, do we hold onto the windows others see us through, or do we create our own definitions for ourselves? I don't think it's that easy. George Bernard Shaw once said "Life is not about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself." I could not agree more.

The reason we have so many different windows and the reason we are able to place these windows on others, is that we never show ourselves completely to anyone other than ourselves. And the changes to this are always vulnerable. We can never define ourselves for longer than a moment, because that's how fast it changes. So right now... who are you, really?

2 comments:

  1. I believe who we are does not change, but what we are does.

    We are ever changing individual compositions. Every new experience changes something about ourselves. Every person sees us differently because, to quote Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."

    What is the difference in asking "Who are you?" and "What are you?"

    In my opinion, Who you are comes from within. It's your soul. It's your existence.

    What you are is what you make yourself to be, but everyone sees you through their own changing lens.

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  2. That's a really interesting perspective on it, and similar to what I mean... The question of who we are can only be known and created by ourselves. Whereas what we are is what I mean by the windows; each is different. And both sides of this are ever-changing...
    Thanks for that thought Donata :)

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