Identity

What is your actual identity?

Are we what others perceive us as? Or is it like there is an objective truth about what the self is? Is it possible to, be something you are not?


But then how are you actually being something, yet not being it. Surely the act of being something, gives that property to your being. Not only that, sure if you spend most of your time being something you're not, then you are no longer what you are, as you are being something else, which apparently you are not, because you cannot. THEN WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ ARE YOU?

It's a ♥♥♥♥ed up concept and I don't understand it at the moment and currently has me all hot and bothered.

In other words this is existential/identity crisis support group, wassup guys!

i kinda get what you mean

I think it's interesting as well, with a potential to cause headaches. A great way to get a new start is to move to a new place and meet new people.. probably leading to those seeing you as someone somewhat different from what you were seen as previously. If you live in the same place where you grew up, some things from the past often seems to stick. Meaning that you're not seen only as who you are, but partially for who you were before. I think that how other's perceive us is a significant part of who we feel we are. You get feedback from people around you all the time. "That's exactly like you".

There's another aspect to it as well. The term goes "finding yourself". That I find very interesting. Not everybody believes in souls, rebirth and such, but assume that it does for a moment. This term can lead us to assume that there is a true self within us, which also can be viewed as our identity. How things can feel right, and how many of us become more certain about who we are over time. If that's a constant feedback loop as well, where everything you do is checked and compared to this self. It's a bit interesting to think about.

I already had my existential crisis about two years ago. It was pretty bad, to be honest. I've accepted that although there is the "me" that experiences, there is no "me" that is a concrete thing.

We are fluid, changing as the world changes around us and within us.

Sometimes, I may be described as "calm" or "mature." But I think that's only because I'm a true INTJ that can nearly completely take myself out of the picture.

But it can be lonely or sad as an observer.

Has anyone read The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag?

I took some bull♥♥♥♥ undergraduate course that talked about the "johari window" that makes up our complete selfhood or identity or somesuch thing. The idea is that there are four distinct different areas of selfhood:

• What is known to ourselves and known to others
• What is known to others, but not known to ourselves
• what is known to ourselves, but not to others
• what is not known to both ourselves and others

I don't know how much stock I put into that window, but it was a relatively interesting exercise, and an easy credit that I just took for the sake of needing an easy credit.


I much more buy into the idea that "I" do not exist, and we're all just so many objects in space. It's at once the most terrifying and most calming idea I've ever embraced. Nothing we do matters, so all that matters is what we do, etc etc.