i am

i sometimes wonder -- how would it be like to be something i am not? i don't mean that i would necessarily want to be somehow different, or that i would want to be someone else (or rather the image i have of someone else), but just for the sake of curiosity. say, for example -- if i got to spend a day as an extrovert, how would that feel? not as me with the occasional social flow but as someone who is at ease around people, always, and doesn't think of it as anything out of the ordinary. how would that be? would i still be me? 


i guess not -- i reckon all the goods and bads of our personalities, each and every aspect of them -- it's the combination of these things that makes us what we are. together, of course, with the physical representation; i will always be a short white female of this age and of these external attributes, of this nationality (not that i necessarily deem that very important but i'm sure it has made some kind of mark on me as well) and have the personality that i have. i simply cannot rid myself of these facts; sure, i can train my mind and body and try to improve my personality, behave better and so on -- but what i am, and how i am, is something i will always be.


i will never know how it is to be different from what i am; and no one will ever know how exactly it is to be me. this is a fascinating thought, and a bit overwhelming as well-- even though i share my existence and reality with the people around me, there still always is something that remains completely hidden. the personal experience of an individual; seven billion of them all around you. and even more, they are in constant movement, a never-ending dynamic process that ends (or drastically changes) only after we die.


and eventually one is forced to ask -- where does it come from, then? why exactly am i the way i am; where, in fact, did this all come from? what is the core of self, and why was it handed to me like this, in this shape and form precisely? sure, your surroundings have their share on it, as do the experiences in life you have gone through. but that's not all there is to it, of course not -- a newborn has a personality even when blank of any experience outside the womb; how could we then be merely the products of our environment?


and to be honest i haven't a clue where the self comes from, or why it is the way it is. even the more so when it at times seems that i still haven't figured even myself out entirely; i have this identity, i am like this, but every now and then new sides pop up or i do things i don't know the reasons behind. at times i feel totally lost with myself; and yet it is all i have to work with. but i guess, in this case like in many others, the journey is much more important than the destination.