Questions: Self Identity

[TheEarl]

I'm an improver. Pure and simple.

If I had a time machine, I'd never want to go back and meet a past myself. I'd be too embarrassed. To my mind, I've systematically become a better person as time went on and frankly, I'm slightly ashamed of some of the people I used to be.

The Earl

 

[cantdog]

The reduction proposed by Joe to leave nothing but the self is the mystical state called samadhi. It is known by other names in other traditions: nirodh, ayin.

The ticket for that ride is exactly as Joe states it. Separate the Observer from the external, observed things, the Subject from the objects.

You are not your name, not your roles, not this, not that. All those things are perceived things, objects, seen by the Observer, and so not the Observer. Push them back, pare them away.

Where are you? You are not there, not here, not anywhere. Location is not a part of you; you are just the observer and could be anywhere. Even your body is not you, now is it? Even without settling for a mystical inquiry, you know without question that you are not your body. Push it back, pare it away, be left with just the Self.

Most mystical traditions begin by this exercise, which the Sufis considered the first and easiest of the ecstasies, attainable by anyone. They set up tariqahs all over the core areas of Islam to allow pilgrims to practice this. It was a popular mysticism, not the usual approach.

Advancing from there, you of course would investigate the isolate self to determine what it is.

I am amused to find Joe, all so objectively, proposing a mystical path to the self. Bravo. The logic of the approach is very clear.

But for most of us, the goal as he states it holds little interest, whether it could be attained by anyone who looks for it or not. We all have to start further back than that. Many times, it is crisis which forces us first to introspect.

Individuality appears first in the West. It was the Greeks, growing up in the polis, which is different from the essentially tribal arrangements which were in use elsewhere. The Greeks were very concerned with arete, excellence.

Moral questions, which for tribesmen are largely questions of obedience to the common will, are suddenly personal to the Greeks. Their gods disagree, men take sides, perhaps in deadly conflicts. But the ones who are doing the best job of it are not the ones who picked, necessarily, the winning side or the right god to follow. The best ones, the heroes to emulate, were those who did it well. Live well, love well, fight well, die well. Truth is important to excellence but it is not the same.

Growing up in the west we know from our cultures' bequests that when a crisis of identity comes, a defining moment, that the decision is important. If we are ready at all for introspection, we see that it has implications larger than just those of the choice before us.

Introspection is enormously important to growth and maturity, developing the ability to love in a real way. And everything! Morality, religion, everything hinges on introspection, including a predilection to even begin to investigate the nature of the self (as Joe proposes) But before that point is reached, introspection is the way to answer the very important questions about what to do with this self, in the world.

I think a good question to begin with is this: do you, personally, want to make things better? If you could decide to make it a goal to make things better wherever you go, would you do it?

 

[cantdog]

Mutha fuck, aint nobody reading this thread anymo

I wasted my time complete

shee it

 

[Belegon]

Mutha fuck, aint nobody reading this thread anymo

I wasted my time complete

shee it

no you didn't...

 

[nushu2]

This is gonna sound so shallow after cantdog's eloquence.

Sounds like I'm really missing out on something. A self identity must be important. I used to have one. Must have misplaced it somewhere. Tried to think about it and have been many things and had many roles that seem irrelevant now. Dreams have come and gone. Ideals have evolved and will continue to change. There was I time I knew who I was but I was wrong.

I tried again and, eventually, I just got bored with myself and looked outward into my room. That's it, I'm a slob.

What is the difference between identity and ego? No, I'm not looking for Freudian definitions. Ego can be bloated but so can identity. In fact, a self-identity may be completely false. So, if you take away all that could be false, what are you left with?

The problem with reductionism is that the components are only an abstraction of the whole. If I define my finger as 3 inches long, that doesn't describe it's value. On the other hand, and in eastern philosophy traditions, outward revelations can occur from looking inward. "God is in the details", for many western philosphies.

I took the advice and questioned if I want to make things better. It's what I do. I do it for a living and a way of life. "Give me the wisdom to know what I cannot fix and knowledge to fix what I can." I wouldn't give a nickel to an addict but I gave 40 bucks to a stranger to get to a job last week.

I would argue that introspection is not necessary for growth. It seems that all it takes is to be open and willing to learn.

 

[cantdog]

nushu2--I tried again and, eventually, I just got bored with myself and looked outward into my room. That's it, I'm a slob.

LMAO!

Now that's wit. A slob and a wit! We come closer to knowing all the time!

I'm never comfortable, altogether, with the identity hogwash. It was the phrase to use when I came of age, as well. All of us were said, by the professional molders of the youth, to be seeking our identity, finding out who we were.

The word seems to be a bit misdirecting. I think most of us were without question finding our old skin, as a prepubescent child, an ill-fitting thing. Every few weeks for a while, there, some new bodily transformation would become noticeable. But this, for me, was beside the point. A change in the body is not a change in the self. Me, in a wheelchair, is still me, for example.

Hormonal changes are more profound in their effects on the emotions. Not just PMS, but a new range of subterranean impulses, secrets, fantasies. You can deal with that part once you know how deep it goes (and how much fun it is).

More subtle is the rage and the sudden importance of dominance in the peer group. Children do dominance, also; it's wired in, it's an inheritance from the ancient house-ape social system in the troop, clan, tribe. Status drives occupy a lot of time in the life of a person of any age. Learning to limit those impulses is an important dimension to maturity, as well. But adolescents receive a real big boost in the dominance thing.

In my case, it was unrestrained dominance games that caused the crisis by posing a moral choice.

You can wing moral choices by simply picking a way to go without analysis. Any given moral decision can be made without worrying whether it forms a pattern or defines a system of morality. I'm not built that way; I don't get to do anything without analysis for very long. Call it a failing or a virtue, it's gonna happen whatever you call it.

So there I am, thinking suddenly about my moral code, which was pretty rudimentary and casual right at the time.

How good am I planning to be? How much am I willing to defer my gratifications because I know that doing one thing or another would be wrong?

To call that "identity" is a bit of a stretch, and I had to mentally translate to understand what "seeking identity" was supposed to mean.

 

[impressive]

I am my desires ... and my desires are me. Ever changing.

 

[mismused]

Hadn't noticed this thread before.

I was working this up (see below), and still am, so it is not totally complete, and wondered what I would do with it. Maybe this is a good place for it.

This is for what I term "existence." See the first line of my sig line to get an idea of how I see existence Vs. life.

Again, this is a work in progress, but maybe it will be of help to this thread, or to someone. Originally, it was to be of help to anyone having a hard time trying to figure theirselves out. You'll see. Note one of the operating words: "usually."

===========================

To help yourself, and to help your therapist, it is usually all about your habits, and why you felt you had to have it/them. We are habits. They usually rule us, they usually dictate to us. They were/are good for us at some point in time, but each was made for a reason, and if that reason no longer exists, then "knowing" why we began to need that habit will soon make it null and void. The mind made it/them, the mind will release it/them.

To learn about how we got them, and why we needed them, we need to talk to ourselves. When we talk to ourselves, we should never ascribe to ourselves, or to anyone else:

Blame, or credit

Shame, or pride

Right, or wrong

regret, or jubilation

guilt, or no guilt

It's easy except for that one thing: The talking to ourselves. We have to discern which portion of us is doing the talking. Habits are sneaky little critters. Once made, their only reason for being is to be, and if you don't think so, try breaking one without knowing why you need to break it. It will go behind your back, behind the back of your reasoning, and it will persuade you that it is needed, and by force of presence if need be.

Habits also seem to have a way of networking with themselves, to be a community of back ups for other habits in danger of being done away with. The habit that is threatened will call upon other habits which cannot help being used when called upon. Sometimes this takes the form of stimulating another habit which is opposed to the one being threatened, and starting a "fight" with it to distract you. A habit will do anything to make it difficult for you to get rid of it.

They can do this because they are you, and you hate to get rid of anything that is the "you" that you are used to. It's a matter of continuity, of you thinking that you know yourself completely. You just hate to think that you may not know yourself. Remember this: None of us knows all about ourselves, and it surprises most of us to realize how little we can know about ourselves and still be us.

There is a way to resolve the problem of talking to yourself, and understanding it. You have to learn, teach yourself to listen to the various forms of "you," and understand which is speaking, and why. Yes, we have different forms, or persons, or personalities, or personas. If we didn't, we'd never be able to be angry, then happy. They're driven separately according to need, and so are our habits. We're made to be that way, and we do it all the time.

This will work for 99+% of the people who need it, depending on how hard you work at trying it. It is simple, but definitely not pain free. Why? We inflict most of our pain on ourselves by not knowing ourselves, therefore you conjure up the pain that made the habit necessary. Know yourself, and most of the pain will dissipate.

=========================

What it all amounts to is that all that we are is we/us/me/I, and we are defined in this world by "habits," at least mentally, and in physical action (other than those involuntary ones).

Hope this helps.

mismused

 

[cantdog]

Pear, you still there, hon?

I think it is the Greek notion of personal excellence that led to the really modern sounding individualism in late medieval courtly literature-- Le chanson de Roland, the Arthurian stories (the matiere de Bretagne). Early modern stuff like Shakespeare has the western idea of the individual in need of expression more or less fully developed.

Your Asian director explains that the idea of the individual is not the same thing nor of the same importance in the other core cultures of the world. In Afghanistan, most observers expect tribes and clans to meet, come to consensus (or hear the leader's ideas and agree) and then vote en bloc, the whole group the same. In Cuba, group-think is a pretty deep thing in a communist sense. It is usual there to evaluate new ideas in terms of how good they are for everyone, not how good they are for just me. In hindu traditions of wisdom, the status of slavery is of no consequence if you do the duty that is proper to you. Liberation of the soul can occur from any condition of life, Krishna says in the Gita. But here, the expression of the self and the refinement of it are a big part of life's journey. Western ideas of slavery are informed by the idea that the selfhood of the slave can never be expressed. All people need to be free to be really people.

The problems groups get into with one another everywhere happen between people here, even within the family. Filial obedience is all very well, but the individual must ultimately be free to make her own path. That's why Shakespeare and even sitcom plots are very often written in the west to explore the working out of the conflicts of individuals and individuation itself.

cantdog

 

[fogbank]

Interesting point about the preceived relationship between freedom and self-realization. Definitely a mark of western culture. Is it possible that someone who is free will constantly attempt to attain a sense of self through external projections (doing and achieving things), a pursuit that could be seen as a distraction from the real process of self-realization? Various religions place restraints that may seem unnecessary from the outside, but which have the useful effect of limiting freedom and thus inducing introspection and true self-realization.

 

[Guest]

Pear, you still there, hon?

Yes! I am keeping up with my thread and want to give a very thoughtful riposte(s). Thank you, and everyone else, for such interesting responses.

anon, Perdita

 

[gothgodess]

It is most likely, I should think, that we are all, when predication is gone, the same. Whether that means we're part of somethinf bigger or not, I couldn't say. I would think that the self would be a fairly blank slate. Personality being only an addition to self.



I have to dissagree, I think personality is a big part of self. when you strip away outward aperance you are still left with a persons core beleifs and feelings, these are a big part of a persons personality and therefor contribute to a persons self.
Like lucifer I have had to examin what I think of as my self to deal with me. I don't always like my true self but I aknowlage that it is the faults as well as the good points that make us who we are. You can't strip these away without loosing your self.

But we are all very similar, we have the same core hopes and fears.

 

[Guest]

I won’t make many personal references but please know I’ve taken everyone’s thoughts into serious consideration (well, nearly everyone’s, haha). First, allow me to gather together some common words and ideas—

Self as illusion, Self as role(s), Self as perception (one’s self and others’), secret Self, distorted Self, impossibility of whole Self, ever-changing Self, deducted Self, non-Self, Self as experience, essence of Self or Self as essence, Self inextricable from “something bigger” (humanity, universe, etc.), Self as individual, Self as actor of actions (what one does in the world), Self as ego, Self as habits.

I’ll begin with another quote, this from “Measure for Measure” (Act II, scene 2). Isabella (a young virgin about to enter the convent) is arguing with Angelo (deputy to the Duke of Vienna) in order to save her brother Claudio from the death penalty. The metaphors before this passage begin with the tyranny of the law and those who enforce it without mercy. As I said before, nearly all of Shakespeare deals with the search for self-identity and so a mention fits as easily into Isabella’s rhetoric as in a more obvious work like “The Comedy of Errors”.

… but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep

I love that metaphor of self—man’s glassy essence. We are dressed in a little brief authority before our mirrors (whether glass or metaphorical) so that the angels (the most self-knowing beings after God) would weep at our ignorance and arrogance.

Btw, Angelo is undone by Isabella’s beauty, virtue (chastity) and intelligence. After she leaves he asks himself, “What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?” Unfortunately, his lust overtakes him and he demands sex from Isabella in exchange for her brother’s life. Angelo is not true to name (idea of self) as an officer of the law.

We’ve had discussions on human nature and I believe most people would say we are half nature and half contra-nature (body and mind). It may be obvious but we must admit that to have a self, as human beings, we must be alive. (I won’t get into the ‘self in after-life’.) Karl Jaspers, an existentialist philosopher who was first a medical doctor and psychopathologist, wrote a work called “Tragedy Is Not Enough”. In it he speaks of the atonement of the guilt of being an individual (a self), stating that merely being alive causes destruction. There is a similar idea in an Indian (N.Amer., cannot recall the tribe) saying that our very breathing kills others. E.g., someone can be born and do nothing, merely lie there and live—and it effects the universe, others. We take up life by existing, and so we cause death.

This is the nature of tragedy, or at least a part of it. “The Oresteia” may well be the most perfect tragic drama ever written. In it and in a work like “King Lear”, the tragic hero is the self that battles the common herd. This is in opposition to comedy where the hero-self becomes part of the common herd (the big picture), as him or herself. It is also in opposition to the epic hero who is a part of a tapestry (of humanity or his world) and whose purpose is to move through that design; the movement is the essence, not the self.

I mention all this because I most often think of self-identity through a literary lens (glass), and because a history of the idea or search for self-identity can be traced and studied in the arts (the written word pronouncedly).

I do want to note Joe’s statement of self as a “tiny thing”, not truly existing without predicate (if I got that right). I cannot accept that when I think (believe) that the self is the architect of reality. We have art and physics because of the self, we have ‘the world’ because of the self. We have ourselves because of the self, i.e., we must stand outside ourselves to look at our selves. We cannot be tiny or nothing. (That statement has naught to do with arrogance or pride, but is more an appreciation of our contra-nature.)

Cant, you mentioned “arête”, but the term for the Greeks could have been applied to a horse or a sword. Still, arête was dependent on performance. The self defines itself through action, and our actions cannot be separated from our self. Which takes me back to the western idea of self represented so thoroughly in literature.

I think I’ll stop here. I hope I’ve made some sense and not obfuscated (always a possibility when using language).

Perdita

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by gothgodess

I have to dissagree, I think personality is a big part of self. when you strip away outward aperance you are still left with a persons core beleifs and feelings, these are a big part of a persons personality and therefor contribute to a persons self.
Like lucifer I have had to examin what I think of as my self to deal with me. I don't always like my true self but I aknowlage that it is the faults as well as the good points that make us who we are. You can't strip these away without loosing your self.

But we are all very similar, we have the same core hopes and fears.

But... essentially, I am not my "distaste for irrationality". I am not me "controlling manner". I am not my anxieties, conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, or any of my personality traits. My personality is a collection of those things, but I am no sooner those things than I am my body or my job.

I am not my "belief in God" nor my "fast and loose ways ways with the hearts of other" nor my "happiness, unhappiness, love or like or hate". Those are things I have, but they aren't "me" (as an essential self-identity).

In the end, all "I" actually is--it seems--is a recognition that in the end... all those things could be stripped away... and I could still know I existed.

I don't know how similar we all are. We may, by virtue of the unpredicated "I", be perfectly identical.

 

[English Lady]

But... essentially, I am not my "distaste for irrationality". I am not me "controlling manner". I am not my anxieties, conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, or any of my personality traits. My personality is a collection of those things, but I am no sooner those things than I am my body or my job.

I am not my "belief in God" nor my "fast and loose ways ways with the hearts of other" nor my "happiness, unhappiness, love or like or hate". Those are things I have, but they aren't "me" (as an essential self-identity).

In the end, all "I" actually is--it seems--is a recognition that in the end... all those things could be stripped away... and I could still know I existed.

I don't know how similar we all are. We may, by virtue of the unpredicated "I", be perfectly identical.

I know I'm coming in late here, so excuse me if I miss points or make no sense whatsoever. I'm not a big ponderer and I sure as hell am not an intellectual but I do think. This thread has got me thinking.

You know I think I agree with most everything written here.

How can that be?

Well I think there are differences in what "Self" we are talking about. I think Like Joe..in the quote above that once everything is stripped away there is something,the very core of my being which is "me".

However that is not the only part of self, it is the inner core of it, maybe where Self begins. It has it's importance but I think the Percieved self is probably more important in life.

I mean the self which is defined by our roles, our personalities the way we react and interact with others. For living life this has got to be the most important part as it is the part that we show to others. We don't show that inner core to anyone else, in fact we probably never really see it ourselves. So in relation to our day to day life it is simply not important...yet it is vitally important because we would not exsist without it.

I do not know if we would find our self identity to be individual. I think we'd find each one a hell of a lot more similar than we'd expect, if not exactly the same.

I think stripping ourselves down to our inner identity, our core, our beginnings is something we should attempt to do. It gives perspective to everything else.


this line...said so eloquently by Joe, sums it up for me :

"In the end, all "I" actually is--it seems--is a recognition that in the end... all those things could be stripped away... and I could still know I existed."

Thanks Perdita for starting such a thought provoking thread and thank you all for joining in on it and making me think. I do so love to think. I hope my ramblings make sense somewhere along the lines!

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Terry Pratchett summed up my feelings on it in the book "Witches Abroad". Here is a paraphrasing in play-format.

DEATH: You are trapped in the world inside the mirror, between reality and oblivion. You will escape when you can tell me which of these is the real you. (they are surrounded by thousands of Granny Weatherwax)

Granny: Is this a joke?

DEATH: No.

Granny: <points to herself> This one.





Searching for self is a five-second process. Understanding it...now there's the bit that takes time and (sometimes unhappy) introspection. Especially if you have to confront bits of yourself you are not...comfortable with.

 

[cantdog]

The intellectual exercise of removing the predicates, as Joe puts it, or stripping ourselves down to our inner identity, as English Lady says it, seems to leave people with a big question mark, because the result is unimaginable, in a way. If you observe any part of it, that part doesn't count, because it is being observed, do you see? It leaves analysis without a foothold.

That's what casts it into the realm of the mystical. (I know, Joe, there's my "realm" again.) What the sufis and other mystics do is not what we have done, reading this and defining the Observer as a point of view without other seeming attributes. The state of samadhi is dwelling, I guess you have to say, in the self, losing all else. Outward descriptions by others in the room usually call it a trance. From within it, it is certainly nothing like sleep, and not involved with stopping.

For me the hardest part was to shut down the ever-cranking intellect to allow that to begin to happen. And for me, it was a slippery state which I slid by, nearly every time.

Once I was there, I slipped on into something else. The first time I had a mystical state happen to me I was working at a repetitive, detailed task.

Sleep-deprived and a little blown away by allergies, I was digging with fingers and a slim screwdriver a community of small plants and mosses, molds, even insects and worms, I suppose, from between the bricks. My driveway ends in a section of laid bricks. My town was forest before it was a town, and the soil is forest-floor soil as it is in this part of the world, glacial soil, which began as a mix of clay and gravel and so on of every size particle. Humus and clay with a few pebbles were between the bricks. The roots came up in plates, formed the shape of the slot between them.

Gentle tugging with the fingers was the way to loosen and then remove the stuff, and so you got an inch or three at a go, with a whole lot of driveway to do. It enforced a concentration. It was easier if one were oblivious to the large task and set instead on the small and immediate, reaching down with the sense of touch to sense the rootmass pulling loose, but trying not to rip off only the top and have to dig the rest up with the screwdriver, because it came away so much more cleanly like that.

Then-- if a word with a time connotation is the one to use-- I saw the world from the point of view of the little community between my bricks, forever driven over, walked on, and limited in the narrow fissure. Grass and plantain, smartweed, horsemint and chamomile all stunted and interspersed with resilient little green screws of mosses... I became them, "saw" as they would have seen, which was from a coign of vantage below my real body, of course, limited sharply by the crowded green, open to the sky and rain and the bellies of caterpillar hunters, slugs, cats...

I realized that it had happened, which of course made it stop. You can't realize anything without using your mind, processing with the mind. The mind restarted, basically just uttering WTF? and that was it.

But before it got to the being-a-moss phase, there had been a split in my awareness, a phrase which has little meaning until you do it, I'm afraid. From the accustomed unity of self one moves around in all one's life, I split clearly and decisively into three parts.

There was my body, clearly not me, but for which I was responsible; my mind, which surprised me (later, that is, when I was able to think about it, but not then) by equally clearly not being me at all; and the Observer, undeniably me. I identified with the observing part and slid by that state into the identification with my little community of green under my muddy fingers. And thence to the big WTF which brought the whole episode to a close. And I'm sure anyone sipping tea on the porch, watching, would have called it a trance.

The most difficult part to get my head around was that I had absolutely no idea how long I had been in those states of trance, neither the clean split nor the shapeshifted phase as a moss or whatever. It might have been an hour or a split second. I mean that exactly.

It took a lot of conversations and reading to make me decide that it had been a spontaneous mystical state and not , for instance, schizophrenia or something equally icky. And I'm atheist still. Cantdog, the atheistic mystic. Dood. This had to be investigated further, and that is what I have done.

I'll leave it here for now.

cantdog

 

[steve w]

Can I approach this thread from a slightly different angle?

Do we feel that "self" exists at birth (or before) and remains unchanged through life - that it is "our essence" in some way? Or do we feel that we start as some kind of clay and are moulded by our experiences through life?

If we feel the former, then perhaps our ultimate "self" is larger than Joe was theorising, as it remains our essence throughout our lives. If we believe the latter, the "self" may be a small core, which is overlaid by experiences.

Ultimately, surely our "self" is merely our own perception. As has been pointed out, others frequently have a different perception of us (even loved ones we think know us well). What they feel we are jars with our own view of what we are, or (as Lou said) what we would like to be. If this is the case, what we actually are is no more relevant than what we feel we are - perception becomes reality because we act upon it.

Perhaps in an essentially individualistic Western culture, this idea is more important, because the individual is less encouraged to form part of a wider group. Hence "identity" and "self-actualization" seem to play a large part in our lives.

Possibly we could define ourselves by looking at those things which would remain unchanged regardless of the circumstances or experiences we face, whether that is our religious belief, our moral values, our talents, or what we find funny or touching. These things may be the quintessential core that makes us who we are, rather than temporary layers added over the top by life.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I thought the Japanese culture was strongly against finding yourself and your own identity, and instead encouraging people to blend in with the great mass and be just one more pebble on the bottom of the sea..?

 

[Guest]

There was my body, clearly not me, but for which I was responsible; my mind, which surprised me (later, that is, when I was able to think about it, but not then) by equally clearly not being me at all; and the Observer, undeniably me.

Cant, you know I take your mind seriously, so don't think me being glib. The way you explained your mystical experience struck me as common. I cannot see the difference between your Observor during that time, and the one that is always there (for you or anyone). I don't quite get why you've brought mysticism into this.

Pear

 

[Guest]

I'm not a big ponderer and I sure as hell am not an intellectual but I do think. ... I do so love to think.

El, I am very glad you joined in, and I very much like what you posted; you made me think more, which is the point in such a discussion as this.

It's obvious you like to think (else you wouldn't write!) That's all it takes really, the desire and pleasure of it. Professional intellectuals are too often removed from real life, so it's not a label that impresses me. Anyway, I hope that came off right, I'm trying to compliment you and tell you I admire you.

Perdita

 

[English Lady]

It came off right..Thanks Perdita


Stevew....I am not sure what I believe there....but i do like the idea of having some essential essence in us from our conception...something that is so intrinsically us that it was working in there right before we were born. I like it I think because of my favourite psalm (139) which says the God knew me and my destiny as I was knitted together in my mothers womb.(EL paraphrase there*L*)

 

[Guest]

... my favourite psalm (139) which says the God knew me and my destiny as I was knitted together in my mothers womb.(EL paraphrase there*L*)

El, I love that psalm, the metaphor makes me tear up. Glad you reminded me. P.

Just found this online (lines 13-16):

You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb.
I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew;
my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I often think about this question, esp now as I'm going through a mini 'mid-life' crisis. My parents moved to the US when I was a kid, but they also considered Germany and Australia as options. I believe there's a part of me that would have been the same no matter where they ended up (my internal self) and a part of me that would have been completely different (external self).

A bigger question for me, though, is who I would have been had we stayed in our original country, as the immigrant struggle and taking care of and teaching my parents shaped a huge part of my internal and external self growing up.

 

[English Lady]

Ahh you're a good'un Perdita.

Yes those are the lines I mean. It's such a comforting image...makes me warm all over, like arms are wrapped around me, holding me close.