You are not you: The Many Faces of Identity and reality
There is this book by Luigi Pirandello entitled ‘One, no one, one hundred thousand’. It covers the fact that each one has a different reality for everybody. Your surroundings perceive you in a different way compared to yours. Your partner, your mother, your friends, every person has a unique perspective of your identity. Vitangelo, the main character of the book, undergoes a process of deconstruction of his identity from the moment he realizes that his wife has a different image of him.
Luigi Pirandello contemplating your indentity. An identity that isn’t yours.
We can see in the title that ‘one’ encapsulates one’s perception of reality and identity, ‘no one’ captures the impossibly and the elusiveness of pinning down one singular perspective of the reality and self, and ‘one hundred’ reflects the myriad of colors and lens that people use to paint and see one’s identity and reality.
This philosophy is particularly fascinating for personal growth. In fact, as human beings, we can be stuck in perceiving our situation in one way or another and usually within a negative lens due to our brain’s inherent bias toward identifying potential threats for self-preservation. The idea of giving a situation multiple images of interpretation gives us not only hope but also empowers us to shift from a mindset of self-victimization to one of optimistic resilience. It is indeed an opportunity to take our power back from the darkness and redirect it to the light. Moreover, by recognizing the plurality of perspectives, we enable ourselves to challenge the often misleading realities our minds construct. After all, 99% of bad things that we think of do not occur. It is probably difficult at first to reset our thinking process and the brain has a tendency to search for proof in our Newtonian world. However, consistently embracing and holding onto new, positive beliefs can lead to outcomes that align with these beliefs.
For instance, entering a room with confidence and self-assurance creates a palpable presence that has an inevitable great impact on people’s perceptions, just as a lack of confidence can attract similarly minded individuals. This phenomenon isn’t a matter of complex geometry or quantum physics but a reflection of basic human behavior, where like-minded individuals tend to gravitate toward each other. Have you ever seen an addict constantly hanging out with a healthy person?
Just as there is no yin without a yang and no shadow without a light, this philosophy has just as many advantages as drawbacks. It provokes a whirlwind of thought. In fact, a person reading and adopting this way of thinking may go wild and crazy: If there is a multitude of perceptions of oneself in people’s heads and if I, myself, cannot come up with the singular one that is closest to the truth, how am I supposed to authentically navigate my life? This conundrum mirrors the journey of Vitangelo. He explores the disintegration of the singular identity in the face of varying perceptions by others. A true personal crisis and an existential anxiety that questions the construction of self in a world of fragmented and multifaceted realities along with the illusion of a unified identity. A person must be careful when indulging in such profound conversations and monologues. One should not forget what happens to Vitangelo at the end. The fact that he rejected society and removed himself from the financial and social structures that defined him is probably not the best solution to the situation.
I mean, there is a distinction between building a home and a family in the mountains with a self-sustainable system where you don’t entirely lean on the educational, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and nutritional traditional frameworks and fully abandoning all the structures that have been holding us as a society for a long time. It is indeed important to find a balance between the deep and the superficial. Our mind is capable of powerful and immense depth. Yet, there are times when it’s pivotal to take a break from the philosophical abyss and maintain a connection with the tangible, three-dimensional world.
This philosophy also brings to mind a quote by Franz Kafka:
“I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face”.
There is a high correlation between the varied perceptions others have of us and those we choose to present.
Indeed, adopting a persona that diverges from our true identity can be seen as a form of manipulation. A neutral manipulation that allows oneself to attend a party with the intention of being judged the way one wants to be judged. This ability to present different personalities to the world for whatever reason can be disorienting and distressing for you, for others, for everyone. It is already complicated enough to understand an individual from their verbal and nonverbal communication. Adding some kind of mask makes the whole process even more complex and chaotic. What can I say? Not being able to embrace the uniqueness of one’s soul, mind and body sucks. It can lead to self-rejection, self-isolation, and a perpetual state of wanting to resemble someone else.
The only solution lies in fully accepting the reality of your body, the reality of your preferences, the reality of your skills, and the reality of your dreams and aspirations and forgetting about the past, the external judgments, and the doubts. The first one only exists in our memory, in fact, 50% of what we remember is the product of our emotions, personal biases, and our reactions to the world. Our past is not static in our head, it’s rather a dynamic reconstruction that changes over time. The second is something that by no means we can control. Let’s be clear, what people think of us is none of our business. Some stoicism demands to be implemented in this case to preserve one’s sanity and inner peace. The third and final one is something embedded in fear and fear is the number one enemy of the soul. From fear comes every negative emotion. Fear pushes a person to manipulate, lie, cheat, and exert any type of violence. The opposite of fear is not courage, it is faith. Having faith in yourself that anything is figureoutable and faith in a higher power, be it God or the Universe having your back.
Let’s recall the famous quote by Paulo Coelho in his novel ‘The Alchemist’:
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
Some crucial points to consider with this confusing ideology:
You are born pure and innocent. Society educates you, shapes you, and pressures you. You realize that you need to wear multiple hats and multiple masks to adapt, to gain something, to learn something. We are never ourselves not even when we are alone. In fact, we are even more and more afraid to be alone with our own thoughts, we distract ourselves with social media or hanging with people who usually don’t challenge us. The solution: Spend time alone to embrace yourself in a materialistic and spiritual way.
From the multitude of realities, we deduce one thing: reality is neutral. We give it a meaning, a color, an interpretation, a perspective based on our knowledge of the world, on our traumas and past experiences, and on our DNA.
Creating different scenarios for a situation is a form of self-harm. Life is difficult as it is, there is no need to pour more negativity into it. Expect good and expect lessons from everything and anything that occurs in your life.
