Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Pages of You

You know how when you are at work you conduct yourself differently than you do at home, and different still than when you are at a restaurant or at a museum or a baseball game or when you meet someone new.

I know that modification of behavior for the purpose of acting appropriately for the environment is very necessary. You cant go around taking your socks off in a museum, and putting your feet up. But this multiplicity of self, is getting very exhausting for me lately. There are a few people who I can think of who have versions of themselves for work and play that are very nearly the same person, but I can never manage to do this with any success.

What if everyone you knew from all different parts of your life wrote one page about you and then all the pages were bound together in a book. Would the pages read the same thing one after another, or would the descriptions shift and undulate into a wildly diverse tome of You through the eyes of others?

When I think of it this way, like a book, it makes me want to wear different hats all over town-because that would make the most interesting book. Because who wants pages and pages of the same darn thing? No one would read it.

THIS JUST IN: I just found a quote that seems a perfect ending to this post:

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”-Anais Nin

1 comment:

  1. Great post!
    I once said that if I could add up all of my guy friends, they would make the perfect guy. This one's sense of humor and that one's smile, etc. Luckily I got them all rolled up in my DH!

    You make friends with people because you see a piece of yourself in them. I have my loud and crazy friends, and my calm, "go to a movie on a rainy afternoon" friends. Both are totally me.

    Focus on finding out who you are first and don't worry so much about which part of you that you are presenting in a given situation. When you know yourself and like yourself, the appropriate "you" will pop out in the right setting.
    Personally, I think YOU are wonderful!

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