Are You Who You Think You Are?

The mundane and the profound. Ok, profundity is relative too...

As I was making the mega-omelette this morning, a combination of 4 eggs, 2 cheeses, onions, mushrooms, I was pondering the question of whether anybody actually knows who they really are. Self-image is powerful and entirely false.

You can see it just by looking at some blogs, you see it in the people you know, and if you look at the mirror from the edge instead of head on, you see it in you.

An anarchist who believes in marriage.
A rebellious goth girl who lives in tameness.
A busy family-oriented mom who wastes the day chatting and taking quizzes.
And me, societal critic living off of the structure of capitalism, feeling I'm shy but always told that I'm not, and... struggling to find a current definition of myself.

So much of my self-image is based on who I was or who I planned to be that I almost don't know who I am. That's sounds much more serious than it is, though, because the closest definition I've got is that I'm a "work in progress". Sometimes I think that I must be who others see me to be, that the reflection is somehow more accurate than the internal view. Really, neither is accurate. I know what I feel inside, I know how I intend to be, I see my actions in retrospect, and other see only parts of the actions. No one sees everything I do except me, and I see it subjectively.So what does self-image matter?

I guess it's what makes us happy or not, makes us do what we do.

I fought against the self-image of shyness, and that fight redefined who I am. I fought against my rampant paranoia, and that redefined who I am. Although I still feel shy and paranoid at times, it's much less often, and it hardly ever determines what I do. Probably to the point where I am unusual in this society of fear. Unfortunately not to the point where I am unaffected by a society of fear.Well, I have rambled on long enough. Back to life.