Not so long ago I had a party at my house with a couple dozen members of my very close extended family. There was some awareness of this party with the people in my school life, and for a time I considered widening the invitation to include some of the co-workers I would have wanted there. After all, many of my relatives hadn’t seen my house before or hadn’t seen it since the redecorating I’d done last summer, and the same could be said for many of my colleagues -- so why not just mix them all together in one big group? Ultimately I decided not to for two main reasons: First off I had a lot of family on the way, and space was going to become limited in a hurry if many more people showed up. Secondly, I wasn’t sure I could reconcile the idea of bringing together two groups that could potentially have such disparate perceptions of who I am. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been any kind of a problem in the end, but just the idea of having that collision of worlds on deck gave me some pause.
One of the podcasts I listen to is called “Stuff to Blow Your Mind.” It’s produced by the same parent company as “Stuff You Should Know” but focuses on topics based more around harder science instead of general knowledge. The hosts are less engaging than Josh and Chuck from SYSK (one is even slightly obnoxious) but the topics are often fascinating. Earlier in the year they had an episode that resonated with me called “Undercover Actors and The Shadow Self,” which raised the philosophical question: Is there such a thing as a real you?
This wasn’t one of those unanswerable meditative thought experiments like “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” or “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “How many live albums can Iron Maiden possibly release?” Instead it was more about how all of us construct varying projections of what we define as self depending on the interactions we experience. This particular episode caught my attention because it explored an idea I’ve occasionally wondered about going back to when I was seventeen years old.
I was chosen to participate in some kind of North Suburban honor band in my senior year of high school hosted by a college in the area. One of my best friends was also chosen. She and I drove down together both days of the event and spent any free time we had together since we were the only two people from our school there. I remember looking at the other attendees filling up the cafeteria during one lunch break and commenting that since nobody there knew anything about either of us, we could have invented completely new personalities for the weekend and no one there would have known the difference. We joked awhile about who our alternate selves would be before finally deciding we probably couldn’t pull it off because the people we were at our cores would eventually re-emerge.
But after listening to The Shadow Self episode and living a few decades beyond seventeen, I wonder if that would have been true. I think the idea of self is a tenuous, malleable concept. We all have different masks we wear in different environments. I know that the self I project can change drastically depending on what situation I find myself in or who I’m talking with. Conversations with my parents are slightly different than they are with my brother-in-law or my sister, and again with my nephews, and again when everyone is together. Many colleagues I work with daily who only know me on a surface level as someone who takes what I do pretty seriously might be shocked to see how animated and ridiculous I can be when I’m with students. I know I modify who I am if I’m taking with kids, or parents, or co-workers I don’t know as well compared to co-workers who are friends. I’ll talk to the receptionist in the dentist’s office one way and will be slightly different when talking to the woman who has cut my hair for the last five years. I feel a tonal change in what I project even at the grocery store, all depending on which cashier winds up helping me.
I know I’m not alone in this because I’ve seen it from the other side as well. I can think of one woman in particular I worked with not long ago; she always projected the embodiment of professionalism and cordiality and we got along just fine but didn’t interact much outside of professional contact. I remember one small group meeting we were both in, and as soon as it ended and she stood up to walk away with someone else, another side of her came out so suddenly it was as if a completely different person was inhabiting her. She didn’t do anything wrong or inappropriate, but It was such an abrupt change that I had a moment of “Blink” awareness that immediately made me more guarded around her. Fair? Probably not. But in my defense it wasn’t a conscious decision; I’d seen that our interaction up to that point had been done from behind a kind of mask, and I discovered the person I thought I was getting to know well was only who she was allowing me to perceive. For someone who doesn’t always trust easily, that glimpse behind the curtain was all it took to raise my defenses. I know I don’t share everything about myself with everyone either, but I hope that I’m less obvious about it than that.
How much of who we display represents the person we are at our core? With so many self projections rotating throughout a typical day, is it even that easy to recognize who that core self is? Or is it the case that there really isn’t any core other than a blend of these many adaptive facets? What is it you are allowing people to see and know about you in any situation? For example: If you’re reading this you likely found it through a social networking link. When you signed up to join that network, you were given the options of sharing several types of information about yourself: Your history, your professional or education background, your personal preferences, the people in your life, and even what images you’d want other people to see. If you’re at all like me, you put a great deal of thought into what you wanted to share and what things about yourself you wanted to maintain as private, not to mention how widely you wanted that information to be available throughout the network. Do you let everyone know everything, or are there layers? How carefully do you consider what you say in the comments you write and how they might portray you to other people? Is your online profile a true representation of your actual self, or is it closer to being a character you’ve created? Take Facebook for example, since that’s probably how most people found their way here: What do you have for your profile picture right now? What ideas that you might not have even been aware of influenced why you chose that specific image to represent you, if you’re even in it?
For me, I’d estimate most of my interactions boil down to about half self and half construct. I look over my Facebook profile and think of how carefully I considered the information I share. I think about my interactions in a typical day and how my personality seems to adapt to whatever situation I’m in. I think of the deep and open conversations I can have with people I know well and trust, and how there are still people around whom I’ll protect that kind of vulnerability.
I’m still not sure where I meant to go with all of this even now as I’m wrapping it all up, but I think it still fits in with the overall theme of so many of these marathon-month posts. Maybe shaking off some of the inertia needed to keep exploring life involves being more aware when the chances to drop the masks come around, and then gradually but consciously taking advantage of them.
Or maybe I just like writing about things that make me sound deep and using big words. Which would really just be another mask altogether, wouldn’t it?
