the things people can't talk about

It is hard to keep things hidden inside. It is painful and sad and it hurts, because the act of keeping something secret somehow invalidates it, makes it feel dirty and shameful even when it shouldn't be. Whether your hiding it to protect yourself or to protect someone else, the outcome is the same.

When a person hurts inside and they don't want to show it, they form a defensive shell and don't let people in. It is safer that way. They act like everything is fine, like they are bulletproof, like nothing ever bothers them. They project confidence and happiness, and they save their tears for in private where no one can see and suspect they are vulnerable.

And while they protect themselves, they struggle with feeling like they are being artificial, unauthentic, disingenuous. Identity becomes fractured between public and private. They hate who they are becoming but they feel they have no other choice. Who they are and who they present to the world are different things. And eventually this becomes routine, the new normal. Life goes on.

Someday, if they are lucky, the pressure gets released and they find themselves in a time and place with people where they have the opportunity to be themselves with and they don't have to hide (if they have the courage). They don't have to be ashamed. Hermey gets to be the dentist.

I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. (Really?)

Did Sinead O’Connor reach the pinnacle of human existence where she truly does not want what she has not got, or is she just in self denial and living in holier-than-thou martyrdom? I suppose there is a possible middle ground, she is a total and complete sellout, writing something to tug at the heartstrings just to sell albums... :) Regardless, I don’t know ANYONE who doesn’t want SOMETHING that they don’t currently have. There is a reason lust and greed are two of the seven deadly sins, and ‘thou shalt not covet’ is in the 10 commandments. People have wanted things that they don’t possess for as long as there have been people.

I’m not talking just about physical desire/lust, though that is obviously one form of wanting. I’m talking about the basic premise of wanting. Wanting in and of itself isn’t bad. I want world peace – which is not a bad thing to want. But no one’s appetites stop at altruism (even mine), and what people want isn’t always materialistic. Wanting to be a leader in your community/church/office, wanting killer abs, wanting to screw around with that hot guy/girl you met at BlahLocation – we are a species born and raised to want what we have not got. And what we want is tied directly back to our self-identity (or identities).

I believe that there are two kinds of wanting. Routine desire for things you don’t have is pretty normal. The problem is when you take a look around your life and realize maybe all the things you’ve accomplished – while what you wanted at one point in your life – are no longer things you are interested in. Not just that you have the Audi A4 and really want the A8, but that you have the Audi A4 and instead want a Harley Davidson. This is a nice big highway billboard sign of impending identity crisis 50 miles ahead, do not miss, not for the squeamish or depressed, something you just don't want to miss.

So now the things you want out of life (family, freedom, career, possessions, etc) are so completely different from the things you have, you can’t figure out what to do about it. Do you give up everything you have and start over, or do you find the peppermint schnapps the Claus's didn't share with Rudy & Hermey and continue to live the life you previously bought into?

Ultimately though, wanting is still being driven by identity, not the reverse. And identity is so much more than just your social security number/name/credit rating. We display who we are to the outside world through our appearance, our belongings, our behavior. But the essence of who we are is something much harder to pin down, measure, or quantify - even to ourselves. In the words of the ancient Greeks:

Know thyself
The unexamined life is not worth living

But the road of self inquiry is not an easy one to navigate, and isn't necessarily a joy ride. Some get lost. Others turn back. Some run off the road into a ravine and perish. Some never leave home to begin with, preferring to stick with the comfortable routine they know than explore the unknown because change is scary and stressful. There is a significant amount of discomfort in realizing your life itches like an ill-fitting suit you’ve outgrown, and as you shed your old skin, the new you coming out is something else entirely.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
~Anais Nin, "Winter of Artifice"

"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts"
~William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

As a student of human nature, I find the whole topic of identity fascinating. But unlike Anais and William, I am not convinced that everyone needs to travel a lifelong path of self examination to change states, or to reconcile their various personas, or uncover some repressed or hidden true self. There are people who are so comfortable in their current skin that they are exactly who they appear - to everyone. Family, friends, strangers and co-workers all know one person, who knows themselves and most importantly is happy with who they are. I'm not sure if I actually know any of these people, but I'm sure they must exist. :) I think I need to do more international travel and spend more time embedded in foreign cultures around the world. I'm sure there are very different identity paradigms to learn about and explore than those in the western cultures I've been raised in.

~Elphie

In the immortal words of Pete Townshend, ‘Who are you?”

Before continuing yesterday's post about identity, I want to point out something tangentially related to virtual identities that amuses me. I've written before about Second Life, and how I don't get the attraction (outside of financial gain). Guess what - I'm not the only one who doesn't get it. Chris Pirillo has a funny blog post about his first Second Life experience - I laughed out loud reading it. Chris is no dummy when it comes to computers, so the fact that he ended up with a box on his head is extra amusing to me.

Ok, so back to identity. I've been talking with a few friends about this topic for months now, and while the discussion has been fascinating (to me at least), I am not claiming to offer any revolutionary new answers or insights on the topic.

So why do people end up with multiple identities (and I'm not talking about clinical schizophrenia)? Several months ago I had a conversation with a friend about not underestimating people’s personas based on what you see in public. I asserted that some people are exactly who they appear. They are comfortable in their skin, in their identity. Conservative or freak, they are exactly who they seem to be. But not everyone can do that. For starters, society would have a hard time functioning if everyone ignored decorum and rules and said and did whatever they felt like. So while it feels unnatural to be this conflicted and have a personality different from the veneer you show the world, it is often necessary.

Let’s face it, if Hermey had wanted to be a plastic surgeon instead of a dentist, he and Rudolph could have avoided their whole journey with Yukon Cornelius and the Island of Misfit Toys. Rudolph was different due to evolution or (as his father and other reindeer thought) a birth defect. The other reindeer shunned him even though his being different was completely out of his control. Hermey was a more egregious offender to society’s working order: he CHOSE to pursue a deviant career path from his peers. He wasn’t born a dentist, he had the nerve to choose that path instead of testing rubber duckies or whatever else the elf-master made him do in the little-people sweatshop. Either way, Rudolph and Hermey couldn’t fit in with North Pole society (though I’m thinking if Mr. & Mrs. Claus had been a little more liberal in sharing their peppermint schnapps they could have dulled their independent identities enough to make a go of it) so they struck out on their own. While the North Pole society depicted is a bit simplistic in its monoculture, the basic premise isn’t all that different from reality.

At a very basic level we push deviants to the fringes, underground, and that allows the rest of us to feel normal and safe. People are generally uncomfortable with things they don’t understand. So for a lot of people it is easier to mold themselves to fit in even if it isn’t who they are. It is a peculiarity of human society around the world that is started in our childhood as kids take sides and ostracize the ‘different’ kids, so we learn early in life to fit in. Later in adolescence even the 'non-conformists' (emo, goth, mod, punk, whatever) really do conform to one another – they listen to the right music, wear the right clothing to fit in with their tribe. Because isolation isn’t safe. If you are isolated from your tribe and get injured or have a bad season hunting you could die. It isn’t so drastic today because you can just go to the grocery store, but the basic premise of survival of the fittest comes back into play.

So what happens next is an interesting twist - identity drives materialism. People want things because they want to fit in. People in Miami don’t want the best pickup truck on the block like people in Topeka do, because it doesn’t help them fit into their tribe. Rudolph wanted a ‘normal nose’, because he wanted to fit in. You could argue that is a sign he is a weak person, er, deer, because he didn’t have the chutzpa to be himself – even if that meant being different. It isn’t easy to be on the outside looking in (as anyone who was unpopular in high school can tell you) but when even your parents don't understand or accept you for who you are, well, that increases the pressure to fit in tremendously.

next: I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. (Really?)

~Elphie