Who Am I?
The title of this essay is a bit misleading. It’s a question we’ve been obsessed with since the beginning of time. Philosophers, poets, and every person who has ever existed has made this inquiry. It’s in the cultural zeitgeist. It’s the title of a song from Victor Hugo’s masterpiece novel turned musical Les Misérables. In films, characters ask themselves this, like Meryl Streep’s Joanna when leaving her family in Kramer vs. Kramer. Or Julia Roberts as Liz on her spiritual journey in the movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s tell-all Eat, Pray, Love. We consume books, movies, and songs about identity, and the quest to find it. Perhaps in the hopes that we will feel less alone; if my favorite fictional (or nonfiction) person hasn’t figured it out, then maybe it’s okay that I haven’t either. There’s always the chance to go on my own Eat, Pray, Love journey in the future so that I can find myself and discover who I am.
But the self isn’t something to be discovered. There’s no singular moment or epiphany that can solve life’s most fundamental question. Some argue that the most fundamental question is the meaning of life, but it could be said that before you can ask, “why am I here?” we must define the “I” in this question — which, in turn, means that “who am I” is the most essential question.
But, again, that’s not the real question. Which is why the title is misleading. It should be: Who am I, really?
You might even be asking that of me: who is writing this piece, asking you, the reader, to question your own being. My name is David Mandell, and I am a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. Do you know me now? Probably not. A name doesn’t tell you who a person is. A name is simply a group of letters strung together as a meaningless signifier. I could tell you I love Ava Duverney’s Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor, Lights Caramel Action, and that there are seven cartons in my freezer as I write this. I’m a single gay man. I work out. I’m from the Bay Area. I stopped drinking. I could go on and on. But no addition to this list tells you enough about me to really understand me. Why?
Because identity as we typically define it is nothing more than a construct we hold onto in order to feel a connection to the world. We cling to words or labels in an effort to make sense of ourselves and each other.
Ask anyone in your life, or preferably someone new, who they are. They’ll look at you like you’re testing them. They’ll even try to conjure what correct assembly of qualities might encapsulate them. Some people will give a name. Others, a profession. Some may even throw you a personality trait or a Myers Briggs test result. God willing, no one responds with their zodiac sign. More often than not, individuals will combine multiple characteristics woven together by a weak narrative of how they got to where they are. But, we’re much more complex than that.
No combination of the following can help us truly define ourselves: Race. Gender. Age. Sexuality. Vocal pitch. Style. Etc. So what combination of traits can fully sum up a human being? Can we really know who people are?
The short answer is no. We will never truly understand someone else, ever. But is there hope that we can finally understand ourselves?
I wanted to write this piece because I wanted to find out who I really was. So, I began to look inward. I read books. I meditated. I did psychedelics in the desert to dive into the depths of my subconscious and try to pull out only the parts of myself I believed to be true. It has been an arduous journey. And on this path, many have guffawed at my pursuit. It even got to the point that friends thought I had a superiority complex because I began to criticize people who I deemed to be inauthentic. I’d call them out for being fake, or not truthful. And I felt righteous in doing so. I became an amateur social critic, asserting that most of the world will never take the time to truly know the depths of themselves.
And if I could go back in time to speak to that version of myself, I would say one thing: “Screw you, you pretentious prick. You don’t know what you’re talking about”
So here, instead of doling out misplaced judgment from my high-horse, I’ll explore the questions I’ve asked and what I’ve found in my attempt at coming to terms with identity and who we really are. It’s a challenging endeavor in today’s climate, when others model so many different kinds of personalities, and when we also create digital façades in order to be perceived in a certain way. We try hard to maintain control over how others interpret us. I am certainly guilty of this. For instance, I post what books I’m reading on social media so everyone can see how well-read I am. I like the idea of people seeing me as smart.
I even started a book club. Since I had been reading so many books about psychology, philosophy, story, morality, and ultimately, what it means to be human, I wanted to see if I could gather some friends to have some thoughtful, focused discussions on those topics. But at a recent meeting, one of our members called me out. Every month we read one fiction book and I pair it with one nonfiction book for extra credit. We decided on the two books as a group. It did not include my suggestion, Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, which I had just started on my own. I said that I would still read it if anyone else wanted to join me; that would make the assignment three books in one month. Now, this isn’t a Sisyphean feat per say, but it’s a tall order for people with full time jobs and flourishing social lives.
With no takers, I said, “I guess no one is joining me,” laughing it off. One of the members commented, “Well, yeah not all of us are on strike and have that kind of time” (for context, I was a screenwriter whose work was halted during the WGA strike). Everyone laughed and I held my head down. It was a joke, but he was right. I may have been on strike, but at the time I didn’t have to hustle at another job, and I did have ample space to engage in scholarly pursuits. What I had to understand is that the word scholar comes from the Greek root “skhole” which translates to leisure. Yeah, I could read more because I had time to do it. Not everyone has that luxury.
We hold in high esteem people who have intelligence, talent, and therefore, worth. But can we blame a lack of opportunity, training, education, or even the desire for knowledge on people who have real limitations in pursuing those things? Sure, you can always try and force yourself to think beyond survival, but after a long day at work, coming home to your kids and/or partner and trying to maintain any semblance of normality you are limited in the time necessary to consider lofty ideas such as consciousness, cosmology, and the proverbial question of the meaning of life. At the end of the day, perhaps I’m just a pretentious know-it-all reading books about things that don’t affect daily life. External factors that I had absolutely no control over like the family I was born into, the area I grew up in, and my social and financial status, provided me with opportunities unique to my situation that gave me the time and desire to explore these topics. Forgetting the idea of whether or not we have free will (that debate can go on forever) we can all agree there are parts of the world and our experiences we have no control over.
Of course, it’s not totally about the cards we’re given, but how we play them. And, yet, if I was born in a very different circumstance would I still be an avid reader? Would I be the same person if I wasn’t? Can I therefore include intellect as part of my identity, when it’s largely contingent on nurture and where I come from?
Am I a respectable, educated person at my very core, or am I a lost, sacred little boy at heart who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing and just wants people to think highly of him? Why can’t both be true? Are they? Of course, multiple realities exist, in that you can ask five people about me, and they’ll give you different answers.
Shakespeare famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage.” And if this is true, every person is the main character in their own play, with settings and story arcs unique to them. This is the idea encapsulated by my favorite word, sonder: the realization that everyone you see has a life just as complex and nuanced as your own. So, if everyone is the main character in their own play, you, by default, are a supporting character or even an extra in everyone else’s, even though you are the protagonist of your own.
As we watch movies, we can reframe our thoughts on characters when we shift perspectives. In the film (500) Days of Summer, some people believe Summer to be in the wrong for leading the main character, Tom, into thinking they’re pursuing a relationship. It can be argued that she said up front she didn’t want anything serious, but when Tom confesses his feelings, and she still strings him along, she gives him false hope. But if the film was from Summer’s perspective, she’d be fully justified in breaking things off with this guy, who she clearly told upfront she wanted nothing serious with. With Summer as the main character, Tom becomes more of a lovesick puppy with an anxious attachment style.
Both are wrong. Both are right. Audience members will interpret the same events of the film in their own way assigning empathy to whichever character they feel more connected to. People will simply project.
Which is what others do all the time in relation to one another: they engage in projection. Which is why it’s not fair to discern our identity from the way people see us. So, if you can’t control how people perceive you, can you be defined by how you choose to present to the world? At least, who you present as the most consistent version of yourself; the personality you most relate to on a good day.
If you met Phineas Gage on a good day in the 1840s, you’d see a well-to-do construction foreman who contributed to society. He was mild mannered and never showed up to work late. One day, while working on the railroad, there was an accident with the dynamite and the metal rod he was holding blasted through his eye socket, right through his skull, taking out his frontal cortex. The heat of the rod cauterized his skin as soon as it left his head, sealing the wound immediately. He miraculously survived. He was missing an eye, but he was to make a full recovery. But since the incident, people said he was never Phineas Gage again. He was erratic. A drunk. Had a bad temper and couldn’t hold onto any job. It doesn’t seem fair to say that this new unruly version of him was the same person before the accident. We cannot unsee the nature of who he became.
This is what we call a black swan event. A black swan event is the idea that one simple idea, revelation, change, or event can undo our entire world view. It’s based on the idea that for many years it was commonly known that only white swans exist. There was no dispute. The science was settled. Until, one day, someone found a swan with black feathers and completely unraveled the theory that only white swans exist. The thing about a black swan event…there’s no going back.
Let’s look at someone convicted of a singular homicide, a crime of passion. Every murderer starts life the same in the sense that they are born. They live one way until their black swan event: the moment they commit murder. And forever after that moment, for the rest of their lives they are a murderer. They cannot undo what they did. No amount of prison time, or religious reckoning can undo this event. But is that now the entirety of their identity? Can one mistake dismantle an entire lifetime of otherwise socially-acceptable behavior?
So, are we defined by our behavior, even as it changes? Are we the culmination of actions as a whole, or can we solely be defined by one event, especially if that event negates everything else we’ve done? What about what we will do? Or better yet, what about what we are capable of? We are all capable of murder. The only difference is that most people have enough willpower to stop themselves. Are we that different from a murderer? We’d like to think so. But what about that time you got road rage? Or the fact that you told yourself you were going to exercise more and drink a little less? What about those instances where you lacked willpower? We don’t know what we’re capable of until we’re given a specific set of circumstances. And in different circumstances, we might be surprised.
Freud famously describes our mind as being broken into three parts: The Id, the impulsive and instinctual nature; the Superego, the morality of our brains indicating what is right and wrong; and the Ego, which is rationality, the connection between the Id and Superego. Jonathan Haidt describes this theory using a metaphor of a young rider-in-training steering a horse-drawn cart. The horse is the Id. The horse, at the end of the day, has control to run rampant if it chooses to do so but the Ego, the rider, holds the reins to control the Id. And the Superego is the young rider’s parent who sits beside him; the person with authority telling the rider which way he should go. But the rider still maintains full control. Or at least he’d like to believe he has full control.
So, in the case of Phineas Gage — who may not have been a murderer but whose behavior changed drastically after his accident — he lost his Superego, his ability to discern right from wrong. A large percentage of prisoners on death row have suffered a brain injury altering their frontal cortex, or the Superego, diminishing their ability to distinguish whether their actions are wrong. It begs the question, are our shadow selves our true selves, only held back by our Superego? Do we believe that after his accident Phineas finally revealed his true nature, his self that wasn’t held back by morals and social conditioning? Some may believe that could have been the authentic version of himself because he wasn’t stopping his impulses or desires. Are our impulses who we truly are? Or is our ability to control them? Are we defined by the sometimes fickle nature of our minds?
Since, for the majority of us, a traumatic brain injury hasn’t robbed us of our impulse control, our behavior in our interactions with others typically falls within a range of expected social norms. Some of us would like to think that how we act behind closed doors and in proximity to people is consistently the same, but the reality is that we behave differently when we’re perceived.
The Observer Effect, a widely accepted theory in quantum mechanics, states that particles act differently when observed. Meaning, any particle that exists in the world, whether it is light, or matter, behaves slightly differently when we look at it versus when we don’t. This feels a little like science fiction, but the double slit experiment has confirmed this to be true. From this we can assert that people, composed of particles, are subject to the same scientific principle, operating differently in the presence of perception.
So the average person has, at the very least, two versions of themselves. The person they are when observed and the person they are when alone. But which one of these is the most authentic version? The hard part is realizing that one can’t exist without the other. We exist, in part, because we are perceived by other people (which is why solitary confinement is deemed one of the cruelest forms of punishment). But when we’re in front of people, no matter how hard we try, we behave, even if it’s slightly, differently.
On top of these two levels of the self, we also can present the world with an endless supply of masks. Whether it’s to get a promotion, win the affection of a lover, or make your high school bully jealous, we all present the version of ourselves we want the world to see based on context and motivations.
So, how do we find who we really are? Do each of us need to quit our jobs and travel the world to find the answers? It’s easy to fantasize that this is the solution; if I only had enough money or time to travel, then I could find myself. But that is a fallacy.
The quest for self-discovery and reinvention of self is the foundation of the entire wellness and self-help industries. Juices, tonics, workouts, meditation and breathwork classes, sections in bookstores, movies, songs, and art all surround the quest. The purity of this pursuit has been hijacked and commoditized like most everything in our lives. Capitalism has taken the question of “who am I” hostage, to turn a profit.
No one cares if you find answers. They just care that you’ll always be looking. Spending money. You’ll spend the rest of your life searching. But the answer is much simpler. And price-less.
We are not confined to one singular identity.
We are enigmatic. As Walt Whitman wrote, “I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
Some parts of ourselves are within our control, some are not. And the self that is, is something we can create. And mold. And shape. And reinvent. Every minute of every day.
All of us are chameleons, whether we present differently based on the situation or in the sense that we inevitably change over time. The reason we can’t find the end of the labyrinth of masks we wear is because there isn’t one. It’s a relentless void. And once we feel like we come to the end of our nesting dolls of personas, we seem to always find another one.
So maybe we should stop trying to “take off our masks,” and learn to embrace that every mask we wear represents a part of ourselves. And at the end of the day, each mask also reflects the person looking at it, because those who perceive us interpret who we are so that we make sense to them.
If I’ve learned anything it’s the fact that I know nothing. I’ll never know who I really am because right now I am different version from yesterday. Different from tomorrow. Constantly changing. Constantly growing.
The only certain thing to be found in seeking ourselves, is endless possibility.
