daydream

Holding fast to an adopted sense of self is the practice of self-limitation. You cannot be who you are if you are playing the same role(s) day after day for really long stretches of time, especially if those are roles that do not fulfill your needs or satisfy your desires. Self-discovery comes through the willful and considerate transformation of everyday thinking, feeling, decision making, and behavior.

Here is your homework. You have to spend the rest of the day as if you have an entirely different personality and self-conception. Not just around other people, either. You need to think and feel like your newly adopted persona. Get inside the head and heart of a different person today. Try him or her on for size.

Here's the kicker. Keep doing this for six weeks. If you try, you'll notice how much easier it is to become this new identity as time passes. Notice how you actually learn to create your self-identity by changing the process by which you tell your self the story of your self. You will get to know your self by paying attention to the story you are creating to define your self. This is how your self-identity formed in the first place. The difference being that in childhood, adolescence, and even throughout much of your adult life, you've allowed externally generated "stories" of who you are, of who you can become, of what you value, of who you want to become to define who you are. This new approach allows you to create your own self-identity, allows you the power to consciously reject what you don't like and to consciously choose what you do.

But how to determine what you like and dislike without being influenced by the "default" you that exists now? You do it by trying to figure out the mind, heart, motivations, and behaviors of a new person over time. You recognize that the impulses you experience are not this new person's impulses so you don't react as you would have in the past to the impulses you feel. You have to slow down and consider the meanings of instincts and feelings, of the stream of your own thoughts, of your interpretations of anything and everything.

It's only then that you can even dream of making a decision as the "new" you and then act accordingly. By working to identify and understand the strengths, limitations, and manifestations of your new self, you discover new goals in life--or if you even have any goals. This "new you" doesn't have to be a persona that is an "improvement" on you. No, if anything, becoming someone worse than who you have thus far chosen to be might be of more interest and perhaps a better means for self-discovery. Instead of running away from your distastes you run toward them. Try that on for size and see how nauseous you become. Notice whether or not you have empathy for the reasons why the new you is who he or she is; notice whether or not you hold the new you in contempt as well. Try to withhold judgment for a time in order to get to know this person. If you recoil in disgust or become attached to it through empathy then your view will be filtered through that lens. Try filtering your view through the lens of a dispassionate observer, of a person without a stake in the game even though this is your life at stake. Try that and see what happens. Or if you can even do it (practice; it takes time to learn if you've never tried it and even if you don't practice consistently over time).

Now, consider how much of this new person you are creating is a version of yourself, of who you could've or perhaps even would've become under different circumstances; in fact, consider who you are in certain circumstances. You know you have behaved in ways that violate your current principles in life and, if you're being honest with yourself, you can imagine future circumstances in which you'd cave again. The mere consideration of those things will shift your conception of your self and your interpretation of your own values and principles. You begin to recognize what is feasible and what is not. You begin to understand how unreasonable you have been with yourself and with others and, conversely, how unreasonable others have been with themselves and with others (including you).

If these things are experienced by you, would you imagine yourself to be more or less forgiving of yourself and others with this new understanding? Or, will you come to the conclusion that identity, if it really can be transformed through such malleable plasticity, is created within a framework that, in a vacuum, might allow an almost infinite number of possibilities? If you come to that conclusion, will you also acknowledge that the particularity of circumstances in a life bound in a body within the cross-hairs of time and space limits possibilities and creates the fatality of the present? Will you come to the conclusion that what is in a moment is all that there is in a moment? Will you consider the moments to be more or less meaningful because of the finality of moments? Will you look into your current moment with eyes wider, with nostrils flaring, with a sense of expectancy, hope, and dread? What else might you decide to explore? What else might you try to experience?

Even if you gave the greatest possible effort over a span of six weeks you wouldn't lose who you are. The main problem throughout this endeavor will be keeping your current "self" from taking over again and again. You will have to live with uncertainty as you try to figure out how this new you makes decisions. What motivates him or her? Why does he or she dance and sing spontaneously in public or perhaps why does she or he stand in a corner of the living room silently stretching against the walls? Does she paint? Does he sew? Will he or she make snow forts or build sandcastles? When an attractive person of the opposite sex (or the same sex, perhaps) walks by on the street, will he or she smile, make eye contact, and let the man know how beautiful she is?

All good questions. All things you should explore. And more. Much more.

There should be cotton candy and gin, streaking and Christmas caroling. Mudpies should be made and lawn darts should be thrown, ears should be pierced and genitalia should be blown. You should pray for hours every morning and night, earn money stripping, or just start a fight. It's not my place to say, really. This is you creating you. I'm just suggesting that there are no limits. You don't have to try on just one persona. You can try on many, if you'd like. Just don't be who you have thus far chosen to be. Explore being something other than who you've imagined yourself to be. Something you haven't thought yet, a conception of a person you had never even considered.

There could be elements of you so profoundly mundane that you didn't think being so bland was even possible. Or, maybe you'll see what it's like to live as an extrovert, discovering that the discomfort of being so vulnerable or exposed is more liberating than stultifying. Maybe you'll discover that the opinions others have about you are shit, utterly ill-informed and extremely selfish. And because of that, maybe you will discover that it's not the end of the world to be humiliated and that you've actually learned something useful and meaningful about yourself and about the world you live in. In the process, maybe you'll mature a little in ways you couldn't have foreseen or maybe you'll become a prick and lose all of your friends.

Maybe you'll develop a passion for participating in life. With others. You don't know. Strangers. People you wouldn't normally talk to, either more beautiful or uglier than you ever imagined yourself greeting out of the blue. Older or younger than your normal impulses. People of another race or ethnicity you don't typically meet. People with values and concerns different than any others you've ever really considered. Gender? Whatever. Have fun and play.

Or work. If you don't usually. Bust your ass trying something new. Rebuild a car. Apply to get an undergraduate degree in physics or biochemistry. Plant a garden. Attempt to travel to 30 different countries in 90 days. Take a train. Spend a minimum of one day (24 hours) off the train in every country you visit. Take only a backpack with you. Just a few sets of clothes and some essentials. Purchase the rest as you need it and discard or sell what you don't need (if you have the money to do so--otherwise, try your hand at begging). Spend only on things you need like food, shelter, health care, and the like. Drinks, clubs, restaurants, museums, castles, dungeons, monuments, wineries, pubs? Of course. If you can swing it. You're not taking anything from those places with you except for memories. But meet the people, too. You have to have at least one conversation with a person in each country. At least one. Make several attempts until you find someone. Anyone. You have to talk. And listen.

If you're usually a thief then try giving. If you're usually a saint then try sinning. Pay attention. Learn. Create. Transform. There's extra credit for trying. There are no incompletes. You have to do this or else consider yourself a failure. No pressure, though. Wouldn't want to influence you in any way. Not trying to steal your mojo. Not putting a curse on you. Not dancing on your grave. Not laughing behind your back. Not stepping on your toes. Not blowing smoke. Not telling lies. Just asking for a self-directed personal transformation. Anything is better than nothing.

This is just a good old honest suggestion that you don't waste the entirety of your life without exploring the possibility that you might be someone other than who you've turned out to be thus far. It's possible you are someone else entirely and you weren't even aware that you have been living your life on autopilate and paying less attention to the most important moments in your life, the moments you actually have real choices to make regarding the direction your life goes and who you actually become as a person versus who you imagined yourself to be or to eventually become.

If you can't try this now because of your circumstances in life then consider your circumstances: what sort of choices have you made that have led you to where you are in life, a place where you have so little leeway to try something new that you won't even let yourself consider the possibility. Now consider what external impediments or obstacles have been in your way and what sort of influences or authorities (including institutional authorities) have guided or coerced you throughout your life and contributed to making you who you are now. Examine the political and economic structures in your community, your state, and your country. Then consider what you really need or want in life and how feasible it is or is not to fulfill those needs or desires within the structure of the system that funnels you through life down particular streams of possibility.

What would have to change externally for you to achieve what you want to achieve? Would a change in policy help? New legislation? An entire ideology dictating legislation and policy? How would the political, legal, economic, and social structures have to change to allow these possibilities? What would your new you do once you make these assessments? Think again of your new decision making process. What are the criteria you consider important? What feelings do you want to create? What experiences do you want to have?

The creation of the whole piece by piece, moment by moment. It could be called acting. It could be called art. It is life, a form of it, and a rather rewarding form at that. Why are we here if not to try on for size the things we wonder about? Does our government and the economic structure it has created and maintained allow everyone to explore what it means to be human or do they limit and reduce possibilities for self-discovery and self-creation? If you would normally consider such questions then try shutting off that type of consideration for awhile. Notice how much you have to think to really be able to identify how you tend to think over the course of most days, over a week, over a month, over a year. Think about the shifts and patterns that come and go, how much less you move your body through space in the cold of winter, how that affects your mood and your thinking. Do you experience a lot of sunlight or a little? Do you spend your days or evenings in museums, libraries, concert halls, pubs, your living room in front of a television, in the kitchen cooking and eating, with a lover or alone, with friends and family members or with co-workers and strangers at work or in a public place?

I have given you an assignment. By doing so, I have fulfilled my duty. Do I have any responsibilities to the rest of humanity after this? I mean, I've done what I could here. If you need more than this you'll have to ask questions. I can't read your minds. Another of life's unfair limitations: no telepathy. It's just wrong. I would choose that if I could. It would be so easy: "Okay, the me I am now does not have telepathy. Well, in order to become someone I couldn't imagine being I'll have to develop the capacity for telepathy in order to experience it." That's hard work, man. I don't know the first thing about how I might develop the ability to read your thoughts. Do I go to the library to read up on telepathy, do I seek out a wiccan or shaman to help me figure it out? Should I meditate? Should I pray for miracle? Is there technology being developed to assist in this regard? I'm not sure. I guess I have an assignment today, too.