Who are you?

[earllogjam]

How do you define yourself? Do you think it's important to know who you are and how you fit in society?

Do you immediately think of your job? Your role in life? Your ancestry? Your sex? Your accomplishments?

What key parts of you make up how you see yourself? see your future?

I think the typical answer to this goes like - I'm a 42 year old carpenter who is married and has two sons and a wife and my grandparents are from Ireland.

Is there anything more to one's life than this?

Does the way you define yourself make a difference on how happy you feel in the world?

An existential thought for the day - thoughtful posts EXTREMELY welcome here.

 

[nudeyorker]

It will be interesting to see the answers because I believe it changes as we evolve and get older!

 

[surferboy]

i'm a surfer of mixed ancestry born on o'ahu who is in school to become either a respiratory therapist or a nurse. i guess that's how i define myself?

 

[vince]

hmmm... I'm going to have to think about that one and get back to you later earl.

 

[Pecker]

I'm a child of God who loves his fellow man.

And I have a big dong.

 

[D_Jared Padalicki]

20 year old guy, who only knows one part of his family where he comes from.

If I'm a friend, I wanna be there for my friends. I'm there to listen and help, but like making fun too of course.

still a student, social enough, but also unsure about a lot of stuff.

 

[midlifebear]

Well, if you understand Eckhart Tolle in addition to the teachings of others (Lao Te Zao, Buddha, etc.) you are no one once you recognize that fact, realizing it's your ego's need to feel stable is a major problem and then being able to escape that particular negative spiritual trap. So, for myself I working on how to perceive without naming. Takes practice just like learning to play the piano. Same rules apply for learning to appreciate and enjoy the empty space.


Flow and glow, children . . . flow and glow.

 

[Not_Punny]

People are usually complex amalgams (blends) of different identities. And single-note people (who have just one clear identify as opposed to various facets of themselves) are a bit boring, no?

I could go on and on, because I truly do have multiple "who are you" in me -- and some of my facets are completely incompatable with other parts.

If GM had been my maker, I would have been recalled at birth!

 

[Roscoz]

How do you define yourself? Its difficult to define me as people on 'the outside' think i am loud and brash people on 'the inside' know me as a different person. If i had to define myself id say its not who you are, but what you do that defines you ... i always look after my friends, they are an important part of life.

Do you immediately think of your job? No i have been in the same job for the past 17 years. Its not a great job but i do what i want all day, have fun and make decent money to do the things in life i want.

Your role in life? To make other people happy, to bring a smile to someones face is a chance in a lifetime. I have that chance everyday. We all do.

Your ancestry? I'm Scottish and proud.

Your sex? I dont feel male & i dont feel female. But whats it like to feel either? People are different.

Your accomplishments? I accomplish each day.

What key parts of you make up how you see yourself? Personality, Kindness, Thoughtfullness but i can be Mean and Moody.

See your future? The future is there for us to define but is also defined for us.

Is there anything more to one's life than this? Yes.

Does the way you define yourself make a difference on how happy you feel in the world? Yes were all responsible for out own actions.

An existential thought for the day - Its not who you are but what you do that defines you.

 

[Nala]

Defining myself could take forever, because of the way I see myself (and everyone basicly):

a 3D sculpture with transparent outline, filled with rainbow coloured fluid material that moves continuously. Colours are mixed in the process, creating new colours with every experience we face. Every minute shows a different pattern and it's hard to describe it altogether. Because from every angle another light is shining on the coloured patterns and yet you're looking at the same sculpture.

We are all beautiful creatures seen through my eyes. :wink:

 

[Skull Mason]

I was going to drop some eckhart tolle on people but midlifebear beat me to it

 

[ManlyBanisters]

I'm just me. That is the definition. The things you mention in the OP, Earl, are things I do or am in some way associated with but they are not me.

How do I define myself? I don't - if other people ask me specifics, where I am from, what I do to make money, etc., I will answer and if they chose to use that to make up their definition of me then there is not much I can do to stop them.

Oh and YouTube - Who are You
Sorry - it's just too good a song not to :smile:

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

It will be interesting to see the answers because I believe it changes as we evolve and get older!

Yes, it gets emptier. Or should.

Well, if you understand Eckhart Tolle in addition to the teachings of others (Lao Te Zao, Buddha, etc.) you are no one once you recognize that fact, realizing your ego's need to feel stable is a major problem and then being able to escape that particular negative spiritual trap. So, for myself I working on how to perceive without naming. Takes practice just like learning to play the piano. Same rules apply for learning to appreciate and enjoy the empty space.
Flow and glow, children . . . flow and glow.

I was going to drop some eckhart tolle on people but midlifebear beat me to it

Double bingo.

 

[B_Nick8]

Yes, it gets emptier. Or should.

That could not be more a matter of personal perspective.

Quite the opposite as far as I'm concerned. I believe it should become more full.

 

[nudeyorker]

I only meant that your perspectives change with time and speaking only for myself, I tend to define myself less by what I do and more of what I have become and more by people than things or places.

 

[DaveyR]

I'm a 45 year old teenager who loves life

 

[Phil Ayesho]

I am an observational experience of reality.

From the vantage that is my conscious mind the universe is reflected.... like the reflection in the surface of a pearl tied into a limitless net full of other pearls... from this unique perspective and centerpoint, reflected in my own experience I can see all the other pearls, and in the surface of those closest to me, I can see reflected myself, from the perspective of those other pearls nearby.

Like a mirror, I am what others see in me, and nothing more... for a mirror holds no image of itself.
To my clients, a source; To my children, a father; to my wife, a lover; to my friends, a person who accepts them as I see them...
I appear to be, to others, the very thing they are willing to place before me.

And if they look hard enough at me, or I at them, we see reflected in each other, ourselves, or the version of ourselves as others imagines us.

What does Chrome look like? It looks like nothing but everything around it reflected and bent by the contour of its surface.

I am an imperfect, funhouse mirror that distorts everything I reflect... an image warped by the limitations of my own understandings, my own knowledge, and my own failings.

I strive to be true... Strive to see in others how I misrepresent their image, and correct the refection I hold to be as honest as my limitations allow.

I am only and merely what experience, and others, make of me.

 

[b.c.]

Who are you now
First love of mine
If you could see
You’d reach out for me

In hallways
And in secret doorways
Were love’s hiding places
With nowhere to go
Goodbye
To the fields and byways
I remember saying
I don’t want to leave
Cos you, were all, there was to know
About me


* * * * *

Somewhere
On this crazy island
A familiar stranger
Sleeps so far away
Wonder in the eyes of children
And the smile of fortune
Helps the memory fade
Cos they are all there is to know
About me

Who are you now
Umm umm umm ummm

(J. Hayward)

 

[D_Tintagel_Demondong]

How do you define yourself? Do you think it's important to know who you are and how you fit in society?

Do you immediately think of your job? Your role in life? Your ancestry? Your sex? Your accomplishments?

What key parts of you make up how you see yourself? see your future?

As a hardcore Objectivist, I first must define the Self. Like Ayn Rand, I simply identify the "self" with the mind, and particularly with the ability to think; I don't believe that a slug has a Self.

Since the Self is essentially the mind, I believe that the Self is intangible. Despite being immaterial, of one's body, or material self, dies, then the mind goes with it (religion aside). I find this connection to be interesting. For example, does a person in a persistant vegetative state have a Self?

An existential thought for the day - thoughtful posts EXTREMELY welcome here.

To approach existentialism in this objectivist way may seem to cloud what is often taken to be its "heart" (Kaufmann 1968:12), namely as a gesture of protest against academic philosophy, its anti-system doctrine and its equivocation from the "iron cage" of reason.

Neither scientific nor moral enquiry can fully capture what it is that makes me myself, my "ownmost" self. In this regard, it seems that the non-reductive dualist is no better off than is the physicalist. Nor will it suffice to adopt the point of view of practice and add categories drawn from moral theory. This is why I rely on Objectivism.

 

[rbkwp]

-unknown entity--
come from the earth? .. go back to the earth
Sorry earllo . too many Q,s to answer.
enz