Role Of A Lifetime

When Shakespeare said famously, that all the world’s a stage, and we are all players (actors), I’m not sure he knew how right he was. Think about it. Think about all the different roles we play, all the different characters within ourselves, each we reserve for maybe one specific situation or for one specific group of people.

People act differently with different people, that’s the reality for most. You act as the Friend with your mates, the Lover with your partner, the Son with your parents, and a lot more different characters, such as the Enemy, the Worker, the Student or the Apathetic. This is not you being two-faced. This is you being yourself. Your Self is not a definite set of characteristics. There is no such thing as a fixed personality. That is why people are unpredictable. They don’t have set rules.

You can never even begin to describe yourself, because first of all, you’ll be extremely biased and inaccurate. In all probability you’ll only describe an idealistic notion of yourself that you like to think is true. Even when you’re describing something you don’t like about yourself, it’ll be grossly inaccurate. Exaggeration is common. Self-deception, widespread.

Second, like I said, there is no such thing as a fixed personality. You’re never 100% bubbly, or you’re never 100% honest, even if you’d like to think so. We are fluctuating beings. We change. We evolve. Everything about us is subject to change without notice. One minute you’re happy, the other you’re terribly depressed. It’s all about ambiguities. We are ambivalent, ambiguous and uncertain creatures. Nobody can tell you what makes you tick, not even yourself.

The phrase ‘to know yourself’ is therefore meaningless. To know yourself is to know nothing. Like what Dibs always say, the only thing we know for certain is that we know nothing. There is so much that we will never know, and compared to what we already know – or at least what we think we know – there’s a universe of unknown things to a speck of our self-knowledge.

Tell me something we do know.

Signing out

Over and out