I had a neat conversation over some chai tea at the Governor’s Cup a few days ago. We were talking about what it can mean to become yourself. As in, wherein can we find the ultimate expression of who we are or who we are meant to be? We ranged across a wide-variety of possibilities … from self, to society, to something beyond both and much more eternal.
This discussion prompted me to think, as a kind of extension, how we go about becoming anything. Lately, there are two mechanisms of becoming that I have been considering and maintaining a conscious awareness of. The first is how we become what we pretend to be. The second is that we become who we are around.
Pretending and acting have negative connotations when applied to our internal character, but perhaps the better term is “practicing.” Much like picking up any new skill, we practice as if we had that skill already. There is a progression from simple to complex, to be sure, but we can’t go about practicing “half-patience” or “half-basketball-shots.” When we pretend to be something or someone, we often enough start to actually be that something or someone. Given enough practice, we can train a habit (positive or negative) such that it becomes a part of our day-to-day character. We have to be careful in who we are pretending to be.
That fact that your friends have an influence over your character is well documented and nearly cliché. But here at college I’ve seen it more than enough times to prove it experientially. I’m referring here not to the entirety of your interaction, but the people that make up your core. The people that you are deepest with, debrief with, and share life with are the ones that will inevitably influence you, for good or ill.
As this semester concludes and we all travel to different contexts of life, it will be interesting to see what parts of ourselves go and what parts stay. The environment of our life plays a part in determining how we act … and it is always an interesting study to see just to what extent that is true. We are all situated … but I want to be consciously so. I want to be aware of what parts of my life will stay with me wherever I go and what parts are (however necessarily) contingent upon a certain place and time.
It’s those parts that stay, I believe, that make up the deepest core of who we are as individuals. Practice and friend groups notwithstanding, there is a deep and fearful wonder at uncovering what those parts are.
This concept has always been fascinating to me. There are times when I feel I’ve “lost myself” when I’m in Oregon, but at the same time I wonder if I’ve found new parts of myself. I managed to convince myself that I liked various activities in which my friends participated only to later realize that I actually don’t enjoy those activities as much as I enjoy the people.
This has been a struggle this past year as I’ve acknowledged this fact and have actively chosen not to participate in the activities of different friend groups.
At times I feel like I’m having an identity crisis. I often wonder if that feeling will ever truly end… and if the question of who I am will ever be answered in full.
required reading:
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman.
What you speak of is called the Dramaturgy. Essentially, when you’re by yourself, you don’t exist. Because you’re not acting. Acting, as opposed to Pretending, is who you are, or what role you fulfill, in a given situation. He calls the situation the Setting. Pretending would be nothing more than a certain role you’re acting given a certain setting; Goffman would say that Pretending is bad acting, or a bad performance.