Call me Jabba the Hutt
Self.
It is a popular word. Add a hyphen at the end and your google search bar will provide a plethora of topics that we are often concerned with. I think that in a way we are obsessed with self and why wouldn’t we be, it is the center point of our existence. But before I end up in a soliloquy akin to what a eye reddened, marijuana smelling philosophy student may give, let me clarify what I think of when I say ‘self’.
Self is the person, thing, entity, that you talk to in your head. It’s a silent and visible exchange. It’s the entity you reason with before you do or say something. The one you discuss what the people around you think about you based on what they say or do. The one that watches snapshots of the happiest and saddest moments of your life.
Anyone can see you smile, speak, laugh and even cry. But no one truly sees your interaction with ‘self’. Yet those internal interactions guide all our exterior actions.
If we are able to alienate ‘you’ and ‘self’ as two different beings, calling the relationship anything but complex would be an understatement. At times ‘self’ can offer positive motivation to help you push through, other times it can fill your head with the most negative feelings you’ve ever experienced. Your ‘self’ guides your wants and needs by making certain materials, people or even feelings desirable. It can be your peppiest cheerleader, intensifying your endorphins and administering a high like no other. Or it can torture you by engulfing your head in a pool of shame, guilt and regret. A self-inflicted mental waterboarding if you will.
Self can catalyze these two starkly different experiences and everything in between, within a matter of moments. Yet it is a force that has no shape and truly unfathomable by anyone but you.
If I haven’t lost you yet, I am sure that I am not the first person to make you aware of this invisible creature called ‘self’. From my limited knowledge of philosophy, I know both Eastern and Western thinkers have tried to explain the phenomenon through scientific, religious and/or spiritual mediums. Your local bookstore probably has aisles filled with literatures labeled self-help, self-happiness, self-improvement etc. In those books you will find contemporary authors that provide endless ‘mind-hacks’ and other happiness shortcuts. Again I am no philosopher or psychologist and cannot comment to the effectiveness of these works. My only goal is that you, the reader who is giving my abstract writing topic the time of day, just acknowledge ‘self’ as I have begun to.
Why? Well, I can’t promise happiness but I can promise just a glimpse of understanding and possibly a path of improvement. A way of knowing why that certain song makes you feel hollow or why that person sends butterflies in your chest. And maybe, just maybe with enough practice of recognizing self, you can find that contentment that all these life coaches love going on about.
My own ‘self’ that resides in my head is a rather repugnant creature. It took me a while to acknowledge and describe it as such. It is pleasure-seeking to the point of gluttonous, has a sense of lust that seems to never be satisfied, and personifies the sin of sloth. If I had to give a form, think Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. A gigantic, green, slimy intergalactic criminal space slug.
For the sake of not making you cringe every time you read, my own ‘self’, let’s just refer to him as Jabba. Jabba has this gift where he can remember all of my worst moments and regurgitates the scenes into my head. The experience is usually so intense that I have to talk aloud to myself and say “Robin, stop”. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Jabba also loves reminding me of my insecurities throughout the day. A week ago, a woman complimented me while I was showing her our office gym. As we were about to leave she said, “You must come here often, your arms look cut”. I barely got a thank you out. Jabba had already gone into a tirade of how this woman is probably blind as a bat and can’t really see just how overweight and flabby I was.
When your ‘self’ is as nasty as mine is, people can find it hard to understand you, especially in relationships. When I think about it, a relationship grows as two people begin to understand the other’s ‘self’. A partner gets to witness what is truly under their counterpart’s skin: their attitude, their tendencies, their thought process. My past partners had difficulty getting along with Jabba. Women, god bless them, I believe always see a better version of ourselves than us men do. The few women that I have relationships with whether it a four week fling, to a 4 year gig have found that being with a person who is as self damaging as I is simply untenable. For them, it must have been trying to convince a person who has been told the sky is blue all his life that it was actually red. They all tried to go toe to toe with Jabba, and failed.
But I digress, this post is not about my failed romantic career, but the acknowledgement of self and the effect that it has. I have recently realized that I not do I owe it to the people around me, but to myself to reign in my negative ‘self’ — or as I have endearingly named it, Jabba. Have I got full control over him? No, definitely not, but I have learned how to start ignoring the constant harassment. I have learned to dissect the the hidden pieces of wisdom floating in a torrent of negative thoughts. And instead of wallowing in my feelings of unworthiness I am taking steps to work on my gifts in an effort to prove Jabba wrong.
Whether your own self, voice in your head, whatever you want to call it, is a positive or negative one, the only way to control it is to constantly challenge it. Do it often enough, I can promise you that you’ll smile the next time you’re in front of a mirror.
Congrats you made it to end! Don’t know how you did it but I am so glad that you did, leave me a comment to let me know what you thought!
