Who Am I? Am I You?

Who am I? I am you

Another of my ironical constructs that I begin with the statement “ isn’t it ironical?”

Isn’t it ironical? You wonder you know who you are and yet you never fail to surprise yourself when you dawn upon the self realization that perhaps, there is a different you, ignored, unwanted and hidden in the closet. So who is you? Is it you, the one you think you know or is it you, the one who is a stranger in the mirror. I’ve often wondered who I am and always felt I am the one I know. But then if that were the case, then I wouldn’t be writing this blog in the first place. It all began a few days back when I was on social networking forum called Orkut, in the process of creating a fake id for myself so that I could browse the profile of a person who I thought I had a massive crush on. While it started innocently, just to look into a profile, where I didn’t want my name to be associated or realized, I stumbled upon the quintessential question of who I was. That is how it all started. I’m sure most of my readers are aware of the social networking portals, yet for the benefit of doubt of those who don’t, any member signing into these sites are required to create a profile for themselves. This was where I started another tirade of useless blasphemical portrayal of my self.

As I began to describe myself out there, I realized I had the power to define myself, the way I wanted to. Ultimately and of course ironically, this is what lead me through the journey into my cave. The cave full of icicles of human aspects, which belonged to me, I treaded on towards the unknown. Onwards stepping carefully, I ventured deeper into the cave, where by walls full of icicles were nothing but projections of myself in my mind. Walking on and on, I went really deep towards the never ending end of the cave. It was cold there. Spine chilling cold, icy wall that looked more like a work of art of the human mind. With the faint light that was coming from the cracks on the ceiling, they seemed to glow like the aurora bolearis that dawned upon the skies of Greenland and the north pole.

So who am I? As I started pondering upon the whole issue, my heart started to thunder against chest, as if in a bid to tear apart and break free. Like the drum beats in the tiger hunt in the old colonial movies, where the British hunter sits on an elephant with a gun and the Indian villagers in large numbers beat the drum and the empty cans. Like an anxious yet nervous girl, going in for her first child, not sure of what the outcome may be at the end of the labor, I sat there, staring into the wall, sweating and thinking “Who am I?” I started tracing the journey of my life from as far as I could remember and walked through the garden of events that came across, from the flowers of achievement to the barren land and thorns of disappointment. I carefully looked in the garden, to try and find something common that would perhaps be the common entity that could perhaps help me define myself.

The dilemma of defining yourself, and that too again. Why? why? why is what you ask and I retort back and say why should I define myself in the first place. I don't know who I am and maybe I do and just don’t want to define myself. Perhaps I’m scared and nervous or I don’t know who I am and that’s why I can’t. I’d agree and I don’t find a reason to admit that I’m scared. I’m not scared of being scared at all. Defining yourself as an individual or a pre-specified set of virtues and vices, qualities, positives and negatives is very frustrating in itself. It’s like the preset in the car stereo. Oh! Today is preset number one and hence you accept the prophecy that came from the lord “Thou shall stay kind, compassionate, humble and down to earth” and then some thing happens and you’re not in a good mood or life takes its toll and Vola!! Press Preset number 2.which states “Thou shall avenge the world for your miseries. It a mean world, thou has to survive by killing thy brother and being street smart. Though have weapons of treachery, deception and lie. Thou are now a sworn knave of the kingdom of hell”. Fuck! It doesn’t happen that way does it. You can’t say you are one person and that is the way you’ll stay. It all changes. And before you realize, you change yourself.

It dawned upon me that perhaps that any attempt to generalize yourself is in itself very constraining and restricting from some one else that you might become eventually.

Defining your self very constraining and benchmarking yourself against the defined parameters that I'd define here now might act against me some time later. I know this sounds confusing but then think about it. Today I say I am aggressive and focused. Tomorrow I might not be the same. I remember, a few years back, I was not who I am. I was under-confident. Today I’m not. I was honest and docile, today I’m different. A few years my emotions were my weakness, today they are my strengths. Once I wanted to be cool, under severe pressure for thinking what people might perceive of me, but today I don’t give a fuck. I’m ignorant and oblivious to my surroundings. I used to hate people who criticized me, now I don’t take it because I’m not bothered. And it’s not all about changes. Yesterday, I used to be scared of admitting I’m in love with someone or that I have a crush on some one and it still is the same way today. So it’s not about just changes. But the point is yes humans react to the environment and respond accordingly. And so I do. I have changed drastically. I fool loads of people. But now I don’t find it incorrect. And why should I? May be my perspective has changed to look at things. May be I have evolved but then that doesn’t make me a different person from who I used to be. It’s the same person. One soul and one individual, but with different shades of human emotions and aspects in grey.

It makes me wonder. Am any lesser than who I used to be or am I any greater than the person whom I might become. You see it’s not a war of more or less but it’s a war within yourself to the point you can handle your perception about yourself at the end of the day. You look at a mirror and see yourself physically but if you look into the mirror of your mind and heart, you’ll see a blurred image till the time the self realizations dawns upon you that you are a versatile actor in the stage of a drama called LIFE. I know it because I play different roles. I can be who you want me to be. The you here is not you as a single person but as an environment where I exist and respond to the turbulent situations. I play different roles. To me its not right or wrong. Its about how I react to the person in front of me. Understanding him, gauging him and is expectations from you and then assimilating it to being the person you project. Now you might be saying that this not right in not projecting yourself according to others. But I’d probably retort and say hey, I accept it that this is the way I am. At times people assume things about me and I derive sadistic pleasure by playing this game. An inner satisfactions of gauging and distorting perception.

Life is too fast and just whizzes past your ears like a Ferrari and yoou just wonder what that was. Oblivious you move on and this the way I see it. Who cares and who gives a damn. Just move on in life, not thinking of what people think of you or what you think of yourself. Just be yourself and go on. Why define. In the end, it doesn’t even matter.

Irony is that life makes people change and there are different perspectives about human character that can't be summed up by defining a person as a set of ingredients to the recipe for perfection. If you do try to live by defining yourself, then you are caught on the web of going against your own benchmark that you set once upon a time. Doing so, you snatch away the ebullience and charisma of human life in totality. So then who is me? I’d probably say I’m me and I’m you. Its like a Hollywood flick. I’m different at times but that’s me. Oblivious to the world around you, you just live without the thought of being someone that you think you should be or whom you might be in the distantly near future.