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Who are you? It’s a bit of a strange question. It’s a question that can seem obvious to some and perhaps obscure to others. I personally think that it’s a question that should be challenging to answer.
We often think that who we are is something that is real. We often think that who we are is tangible and that there is a substantial nature to the idea. But that is mostly false. Who we are is an illusion.
A self-created illusion of the mind.
We create who we are (or at least who we think we are).
In general we build our identity. Starting from when we are young and continuing throughout our lives, we build our sense of self. We hold onto and become attached to our roles and our ideas about who we are and gradually over time we create an identity. We build a sense of self and then we hold onto it. We cherish it and we fight for it. We become attached to it, and we begin to believe that it is something that is real. But it’s all just an illusion.
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Overall, every human mostly experiences the entire spectrum of human emotions and behaviour at some point in the day, week or month. However, we tend to only validate the experiences that confirm our theory of self. We only hold on to the parts that we like or that we value. In reality we tend to just confirm what we already “know” about ourselves, or what we think we know. We mostly ignore the parts that we dislike or anything that disproves our theory of who we think we are as a person.
We mostly just confirm our own biases of the self in order to believe in our self-created illusion.
We also tend to be different people in different moments and with different people. We think and behave differently depending on who we are with. When we are alone we think and act one way but then we think and act differently when we are with our friends or family or our co-workers or strangers. So who we are changes in each moment depending on the situation or who we are with. So…
You are who you are.
You are who you think you are.
You are who your friends think you are.
You are who your friends think that you think you are.
So who the fuck are you really?
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Who we are is just an illusion. A self-created and self-maintained illusion, and its ever changing, and ever evolving, and ever adapting.
We also have to consider the fact that who we are changes depending on who the perceiver is. How we perceive our self can be very different from how we are perceived by others. In such cases whose perception is the correct one – ours or theirs? What if there are multiple perspectives and they are all different? Which one is right then? Perhaps all of them?
If who we are is in fact an illusion
Then who do you think you are?
Thanks For Reading
I think that obviously is a complex interconnection of various influences. But if I have to talk about the different weight of that,
what I can say is that is more influent how we are perceived by others and their feedback when we are kids, but the ones that infuence our life in adulhood, that build the environment around us, is our perception.
😊😉
Yeah, this is true. A lot of things influences what/who we think we are. In the formative years, external influences from adult figures are more influential but this persist into adulthood. At this stage, perception of people around us also reinforces our idea of who we think we are. But I think, once we recognize this pattern, it is easier to disconnect and rebuild the sense of self.
Sometimes, the influences are subtle and almost psychic, thats why one of the best way to rebuild the self is to disconnect totally by relocating to a place where you're unknown. Here no one has any preconceived notion about you or you capabilities or how you should act and it's easier to rebuild the self this way.
I agree that it is a very complex process.
I also agree that how we are perceived by others tends to be more influential when we are younger especially when we are teenagers. Though it may decrease as we get older, I personally do not think that it ever goes away.
Thanks for the comment :)