Who Are You?

[Shadow Wolf]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

Its an interesting question. Today my mood is stable. Tomorrow it could bottom out. Or skyrocket. Which has an effect on who "I am" for the day. Pain, hormones, or even other people can influence who "I am." Its also greatly changed over my life. Who I was 20 years ago, who I was to become just a couple years later, that person I was then was different than the person who left Indiana. The person who left Indiana is different from the one who lives in California. But that instability and ability to change has been a great thing for me. I probably would have killed myself by now if our personality and the person we are was static and set in stone.
As for what they see, I often wonder and am curious, but its a passing curiosity as its a given many of them will be wrong ("you look like a Trump supporter" is probably the way farthest and furthest from the target I've ever heard, especially with a very un-Conservative looking appearance).

 

[Sw. Vandana Jyothi]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

But Monsieur Salix'ji, you have asked 11 questions here! The answer is less complex, though, as you know. Every instance of the word "you" in your questions which is not a reference to the reality that everyone IS a soul having a human experience and which is tied to the word "are" is cause for a hiccup. Neither the "you" asking nor the "you" you are asking exist in reality. And your second question gives away the fact that you already understand this!

The words "are" and "be" and "am" are existence words. Existence (God, the I AM, Aham Brahmasmi) isn't born, doesn't change and never dies. And this is where masks come in. So Who is really wearing ALL the masks? God alone is the Playwright, the Director, the Stage, the Props, the Actors and the Audience. We feel we choose, we think we are doers. But God does it all.

 

[Revoltingest]

An appropriate quote for the thread....
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

 

[McBell]

Name anything just 1 thing that
you can say, think or do...that is not determined
by something else?

There is your answer.

I suspect you are conflating "determined" with "influenced"

 

[Jimmy]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

A soul with free will

 

[MonkeyFire]

I'm FAITH.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?
Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?
Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?
Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

I am Brahman. All the masks are for Vyavaharika. I would like to be practical and not against change.
The circumstances choose what I will be today or tomorrow in Vyavaharika. I can be a Genghis or I can be a Gandhi.

 

[SomeRandom]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

I’d like to think I’m a work in progress. I have changed my position on a lot of subjects. And I have even reaffirmed previously held beliefs. I try to be skeptical. Who knows what I will be like in the future. But I feel like I’m different to previous iterations of me.
Perhaps that’s all just an illusion. I don’t know.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

For me, I like the idea of becoming 'static,' because I perceive this as a journey toward being an 'objective' observer of my life, and things external to it. I like the idea then, of transcending myself as a 'Jungian' creature. For there is the potential for good and bad in the human animal, but the static state is the third state, where the human does not submit to the reaches of either. For then, I purpose that the will becomes more articulate, and choice and thought become free of being tainted by inner ephemeral states. If one's purview is thus expanded, all reactions are better informed and the long-view is better perceived. The animal within is tamed.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

But that instability and ability to change has been a great thing for me.

I guess I have quite the opposite outlook in that, 'change' for me is a tool to try to attain a closer footing in the 'static' state. When you say that you are 'different' person now, would you say that there is like an 'overton' window of instability that has shifted, and that it shifted toward a better range of states?

 

[Deeje]

I heard that...."you are what you eat"....

Hmmmm.....does that mean....

 

[Mock Turtle]

Moi? In my grey days and now in the pink.

 

[blü 2]

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

T. S. Eliot wrote one very good poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" (and a lot of lesser stuff). I mention it because it so directly addresses your question about faces and being someone. The idea runs through the whole poem, not least this part:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

[...]

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?
​

(The whole poem is here.)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I guess I have quite the opposite outlook in that, 'change' for me is a tool to try to attain a closer footing in the 'static' state. When you say that you are 'different' person now, would you say that there is like an 'overton' window of instability that has shifted, and that it shifted toward a better range of states?

Possibly. Such as I was very religious and conservative, amd also suicidal then. Then I spiraled out of control for awhile before getting some semblance of direction and trying to improve my overall being and situation. Today I'm not suicidal, very agnostic with Einstein-like pantheist leanings, Marxist-Libertarian politically/socially, and things have been getting better for me financially and in regards to my overall situation. Even the difference between Indiana Me and California Me is astounding, with California Me having confidence, self esteem, and is so different I even carry myself different, spontaneously started using a different set body language cues, and even started dressing way better (I basically have to be gping to the gym or in need of an extremely short trip to the store for me to wear gym shorts in public, though it used to be my norm). So to say there is a list of traits with a sliding window to cover different traits as my living situations and sekse of self improved, in a manner to say a "sliding (or shifting) Overton window" I think is accurate.
One exception, however, would be the onset of hypo-manic episodes, which for me only happened a couple years ago amd was induced by SSRI treatment.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Do you get to choose who you are for today? What mask will you choose to wear? Benevolent and helpful person? Horrible malevolent *******?

Or do you even have a choice? Are you are static and unchanging?

Who is it that chooses who you'll be today, tomorrow, or in your life?

Who are you? Is it the person others perceive? That you perceive? Or are you something beyond that perception?

I don't know. I only know some partial aspects.

Look here:
Johari window - Wikipedia

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Even the difference between Indiana Me and California Me is astounding, with California Me having confidence, self esteem, and is so different I even carry myself different, spontaneously started using a different set body language cues, and even started dressing way better

I was trying to recall if there was a phenomena that involved organisms that change their behavior with environmental shifts, not sure if that is a thing. I think the switch you made is interesting, and lately I wonder what it would be like to pull up roots from the midwest and put them elsewhere. I don't think I could do california though, that seems kind of hot. But to get away from snow, and go where there is some semblance of culture, becomes interesting to think about. Apprehension occurs however, when one think about the cost of living shift, possible covid travel restrictions, and running into civil unrest

 

[Jainarayan]

Sometimes I don’t know who I am or want to be. Sometimes I am on top of the world, ready to kick *** and take no prisoners, other times, there’s no pile of **** big enough I deserve to hide in. Bipolar will do that to you.

But by and large I want to wear the mask of the confident, happy, lovable goofball people (and my dogs) think I am. When I was in the hospital last year it made me feel really good overhearing the nurses say “he’s such a sweet guy”. I was feeling like crap but there was no reason to act like crap.

Since I’ve been home I tend to get dressed like I did for work (no, I don’t take my briefcase to the bus stop like someone my family knew who went off the rails). I wear a polo or button down shirt, khaki shorts, even if I have nowhere to go. Tee shirts and gym shorts gets old. My husband said one day, wow you look great. I said I thought I would feel better. He asked if I did. I said no. But I stayed dressed. I was trying.

So yeah, I try to wear the mask I think works best and how people like seeing me. Though sometimes that getting dressed backfires. Like yesterday when it was 153 degrees, went food shopping and regretted wearing anything other than a jockstrap and flip flops. Choose your mask wisely.

 

[Trailblazer]

153 degrees,

153 degrees F?
And I thought it was hot here.
"Hot" here in Western Washington is anything above 80 F.
It was way above 80 today and I nearly died, but it is supposed to be in the 90s for the next two days and that'll be even worse.

 

[Jainarayan]

153 degrees F?
And I thought it was hot here.
"Hot" here in Western Washington is anything above 80 F.
It was way above 80 today and I nearly died, but it is supposed to be in the 90s for the next two days and that'll be even worse.

Well, you must know my penchant for hyperbole. It was in the 90s but it may as well have been 153. And it gets humid here in NJ. Not Houston or DC humid, but more than enough.

 

[Trailblazer]

Since I’ve been home I tend to get dressed like I did for work (no, I don’t take my briefcase to the bus stop like someone my family knew who went off the rails). I wear a polo or button down shirt, khaki shorts, even if I have nowhere to go. Tee shirts and gym shorts gets old. My husband said one day, wow you look great. I said I thought I would feel better. He asked if I did. I said no. But I stayed dressed. I was trying.

Good job. Since early March I have been working at home. I get dressed to go walk over to my laptop but I don't wear anything special, just casual clothes. Of course it is no different than when I went to the office, casual. I never see the public at work.