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Change is unavoidable. You will change the orbits of planets! As a child, I pictured a planet's orbit as very hard to change. It seemed as if the planet rolled forever down an unchangable groove through space; a celestial rut. The bowling-gutter of the Gods. (Sorry.) Once out of its "groove", I thought, the planet would careen through the sky, dangerously out of control. Actually, there's no more of a groove preceding a planet than there is ahead of a rock you'd throw. Same thing; both are in a simple balance between the forces of gravity and momentum. Any little thing will influence the path to some degree. In literally the same way, every step you take, every leaf that falls... moves the entire earth an infinitisimal amount.
Meanwhile, back at the psychological level, every little influence changes your "orbit"; it changes who you are to some degree.
So change is no big deal; it's happening all the time anyway. You're becoming different than you were, but most likely in accidental directions. That would tend you toward conformity or reactive non-conformity. (As distinct from idealistic non-conformity. Reactive non-conformity is just being against authority; part of the teen-age turmoil. Idealistic non-conformity is for all ages; to see a better way and insist on it, in spite of everything.)
To become an individual means making more and better decisions and changes. You have the potential to become whomever you want to be; you are the architect. However, potentials are not requirements. A football player could become a surgeon. A child-less woman could become a mother. Little Ollie North could become a productive human being. But just because they can, and just because many would think it desirable, is not a reason for them to go against their own desires.
Every change toward your desires makes you more individual; every "should" you accept makes you less so. Full individuality requires having no shoulds. Making authentically original decisions requires shouldlessness --by definition! If there's a should to it, there is a desire there, but it's not yours; you're being influenced. If you remain aware of shoulds, and get to the point where you automatically rephrase them, you'll never have to "make yourself do it" again. Imagine.
Physically, you are an individual. (meaning: non-divisable; you cannot be divided into any smaller parts!)
Psychologically, you began to "individuate" from your mother when you learned and felt that you were not the same "unit" as she was. She kept bein' in a different place than you were, so you must be divisible! We realize our physical individuation early, but the psychological individuation may take a lifetime, if it's ever achieved.
We do retain a need for acceptance by a peer group; but only a few among us attain true individuation. Those few are secure in their acceptability, gently seeking but not needing positive input from outside themselves. You can do that; in fact, it's actually easier than not doing it. You deserve it. It's a great help in being present and in identifying yourself; to remember who you are, and more, to remember who you will be. ("Where am I, now that I need me?")
We seem to need external confirmation of our acceptability and desirability, yet we could find someone who would confirm the desirability of even the most negative behavior. Sometimes groups get together with just this purpose; to support each other in their *avoidance of growth/change; to prevent the seemingly-difficult and painful process of changing themselves. Yet, it's you that chooses the desirable behavior and moves toward it or it's you that searches for someone to confirm your old easy one. That confirmation would stunt your growth.
Further, if you find someone to help you avoid changing a facet of yourself, then you have judged that part of yourself as unacceptable and yet decided to keep it! (Of course, you'd be the one to choose that confirming person, so in the end, you're still the only judge of whether that facet of yourself is acceptable and desirable or not.)
Why not just do that in the first place? See how acceptable that small behavior is to you. It's nothing horrible to decide that it isn't. Here's why (this is important). Once you have changed an old behavior, that behavior isn't you any more, so having had it in the past is not a criticism of who you are now!
That's a declaration of your freedom. Once you realize this completely, honesty is easy. Naturally, both of us will achieve that realization only to some degree, but the higher the degree, the easier honesty will be. You do want to make it easy, don't you?
If you're being publicly honest (open) about some facet of yourself that is still part of you, then you're making it much more likely that you'll change it, or at least examine the hell out of it! That degree of honesty would take a lot of courage. You needn't aim for 100% honesty immediately. Or ever, really.
Here comes the part where I take it back. But only some of it. Given the repercussions such openness would have in our culture, moderation and tact is called for. Total honesty requires a fairly ideal situation and sophisticated listeners. Still, I'm sure you'd be safe in being a lot more open than most people are, and more than you (or I) have probably been.
So... choose your greatest appropriate degree of honesty and feel free to talk about who you used to be, at least. It's not as if that's still you, is it? Perhaps, if you *don't feel free to talk about who you were... you still are who you were.
You have the memory of your past, but is that memory "you"? Are you required to act now the way you did then? (and remember that memory is malleable.)
Psychologically, if you have to hide what you used to do --who you used to be-- it will reinforce the idea that that behavior is still part of your identity, and you still are who you were then. But if you can talk about it with ease, your vunerability shows strength: If you've no secrets, you've removed many possible weapons that someone might think they could use against you. On the other hand, a mere pretense of invunerability is weakness, because such fascades are often so thin as to seem transparent to others. How embarrasing.
A lie challenges your identity. It tests what you believe about yourself; your integrity and worth. A lie will strongly perpetuate that negative facet of your identity. So first chose who you want to be, and balance the terrible cost of any identity-loss versus the value of any imagined gain. The scales won't be even close to a balance, I'm sure. Could any imagined gain balance the loss of even a small part of your ideal self?
Honesty frees you. 'Tis better to have told what undesirable things you've lost than never to have lost them at all! Consciously telling about it confirms the change to your subconscious. What you chose to keep and what you chose to throw away results in what your identity is at any certain moment. Change is evolutionary, and one factor in evolution is a series of small revolutions, which is to say: decisions. Add them up.
Hamlet's indecision may have come from --and lead to-- a lack of identity. Is he his father's son? Will he do as his ghost tells him? Or chose to commit the ultimate destruction of identity --suicide? To "not be". That is the question.
* What else is "Identity"?
For ONE: independence, and that's true whether you're in an inter-dependent relationship or not. If you choose to be inter-dependent with someone, it's better to come to it through independence than dependence. To depend is to hang on, as does a pendulum. If someone is 99% independent, are they independent at all?
Of course, some of those feelings would come up occasionally in even the most secure person; there are few absolutes. And there's the possiblity of being inter-dependent and at the same time be in unhealthy roles that limit your identity. Humanity has probably always done so, whenever people have divided work into rigid stereotypes. Especially when one "type" has the power.
Nobody can be totally independent --when you need new shoes, you don't go grow a cow, kill it, tan the hide, and sew yourself a pair! You are, to a degree, inter-dependent with almost everybody and everything on earth. And yet, inter-dependence does not compromise independence; you can have both.
You can compromise with someone without lessening your identity, if you're aware of the desire that led you to that compromise. Someone crass would say that means "What's in it for me?"
What I mean feels much different: if there's nothing in it for you, you're being a martyr; and even a martyr does it for a personal advantage. If you're aware of what's in it for all concerned, you're showing love and sensitivity in your compromises.
TWO: *Identity is autonomy (again: being self-named or self-governed). Autonomy is being separate, free, apart from unexamined influences. The unexamined life may be less worth living, but the overexamined life has no time left to live it or the vitality to want to. (see the "Thought" chapter).
THREE: Autonomy is independence, though you can be autonomous and inter-dependent at the same time. That is to say that you can share and trade responsibilities and pleasures, and still have your separate identities.
FOUR: *Identity is decision. "Decide" also means to cut through, cut off, fall off. "Decision" has a common basis in Latin with the word "deciduous", as applied to trees. This could be applied to the Gordian knots of life as well: to cut through to the root of problems. ("radical" & "radish" come from Latin's radix, meaning root.)
And above the ground, the metaphor continues. Leaves depend from a tree. It is in the course of nature for them to fall when conditions make it necessary. The leaves have been part of the tree, valuable, and part of its identity. When no longer directly useful, they fall to the ground, and are absorbed there as part of the soil. Sinking in, the material is re-absorbed by the roots, and becomes part of the tree *again; perhaps leaves, perhaps trunk or roots. The tree has *grown in this procedure, by letting go of the old parts of itself that are past usefulness. To hang on to them would have gotten in the way of the new growth. The tree would become unhealthy. It's all part of the natural process, and the tree being part of nature, is at home. You are also part of nature, and at home.
NOTICE! SPEED LIMIT AHEAD! One paragraph per minute!
Your identity is, at the least, your image; as created by your emotions and as both relate to the world.
More, your identity is your emotions and the behavior that they influence; which in turn influence your emotions.
And... your identity is your behavior and all the emotions that cause and result from that behavior. Every behavior is the result of an earlier decision; including the decision not to change, the decision to accept or reject an influence, or the decision not to decide.
Your behaviors are your set of reactions to the world as you see it. These reactions are based upon the expectations that grew from your experiences. Every experience will train your expectation that something is more likely to happen again, however unlikely it may be on a rational level. Only one person has ever been hit by a meteorite in the entire recorded history of the human race; yet for months after, that person might've been anxious, and reacted to every sound from above.
We can react only to the world that we believe in, whether the world really exists in exactly that way or not. Given time, we can react rationally to the rational world known to our intellect, but the *instant reaction is to what the *emotions have been led to expect. The intellect is, roughly, our conscious facet; the emotional--the subconscious. I don't mean to say that "rational" is *better than the "emotional", nor vice versa. Just that the decisions that will be *acceptable to both--needs the *input of both (This is just like any marriage! Any person is a marriage of several very different brains in one head... and of those brains with their physical and hormonal influences.)
What has trained your expectations has painted your picture of the world. If you have decided to let "soap operas" influence that picture, your reactions will tend toward more suspicion of treachery than they would have otherwise. If you decided to see "Rambo" kind of movie, you have decided to be influenced toward stupid and self-righteous violence.
People who see good in the world tend to react in a manner consistent with that. Surveys have shown that agoraphobic people watch more crime-and-violence shows on television than the average. I don't intend this to be an argument for censorship of the media--far from it. It's a chance for you to make choices of viewing habits that not only tend to define your identity, but will slightly change what will be available to influence the society that surrounds you *and will influence you back.
Everything you buy influences society, and you are responsible for it. If you buy a boy a toy gun, you are responsible for the experiences he has because of it for all his life; as well as for everyone he influences in turn! Quite a responsibility!
Even in the choice of a can of peas instead of frozen peas, you send a message to all purveyors of peas to make more cans and fewer frozen packages; to plant more peas and less broccoli. ... I like to create lots of positive influences, large and small. When I can, I shop when there's something like a super-bowl game in progress. It'll show up in a database in their offices someplace, and show that people are not so much influenced by such negative things.
Not only is our external environment determined by the decisions we make, they are somewhat determined by decisions we *don't make. Our identity --"internal environment"-- is determined by the *quality of the decisions we make, and the *quantity of those we don't!
Your parents communication-style, your political party, your religion, your peer-group, etcetera, were all *decisions that you made; yet you put so little conscious effort into them that they seem more like accidents of birth and environment. We can chose only between options that we know exist and believe are possible. Did a child in Kansas make a conscious decision not to be a Hindu?
These "decisions" seem more accidental as we look at ourselves at each earlier age: how could we, as as two-year-olds, have influenced, for example, our parent's communication? Yet if it was not then a decision, we must chose an arbitrary age at which a child becomes *suddenly able to make decisions. It's obvious that that *doesn't happen suddenly. It's *equally ludicrous that there could be partial-decisions, like a partial pregnancy.
When an infant first reaches for one toy when two are available, she has made a decision. They also make the decision that some things are beyond their control, forcing them to accept the decisions made by others. The trouble is, we often forget to re-decide as conditions (our abilities) change... by accident or design. I prefer change by design.
**You are more than a collection of accidents waiting for life to happen to you!
One set of accidentally-acquired influences is the habit of automatic attention and inattention. I imagine there's not a habit that's more powerful yet is at the same time so subtle as to be unnoticed. There seems to be no danger in what is present at all times; and requiring no attention, it gets none. I ask: what is more omni-present to us than ourselves, as we have felt that self to be in the past. (and everything is in the past.) So we give little attention to ourselves. On the other hand, we have been trained, in various degrees, to give attention to certain aspects of ourselves, usually negative ones.
Our selective attention/inattention can be trained and influenced. We notice selective attention when we buy a car and notice that the streets have suddenly filled with that model, where we saw few before. We develop selective inattention to tune out commercials and billboards and irrelevant traffic. There seems to be little decision in this.
A clue is there, and it begs for your attention. As a kid, you were told to stifle your impatience while Momma talked to her friend forever. Are you still doing that for other people? You might as easily be impatient with something about yourself. Attention to these aversive feelings are necessary too; to give your evolving identity a clear direction.
What can you do to retrain your automatic reaction of inattention? Same old thing: desire for the advantage of the change, a maintained high level of awareness of that desire (for a time) and repetition. (Sorry, but once you're aware of the possibility of making a decision about something, you must! Alas, here's an unavoidable "must", for even a decision to ignore it is still a decision.)
Impatience with such a problem can be a positive reaction. Impatience is like the nerves in your body that transmit sensations of pain as well as pleasure. It would be very unfortunate to lose the painful sensations, for fear of leaving your hand in an unseen fire, or finding a hole in your cheek when you finish chewing! Almost nobody would elect to cut off all nerve impulses, and lose both pleasure and pain.
Yet if you would cut off your awareness of impatience and discomfort, you would also lose the advantage side of the coin. There's an advantage similar to that of being able to remove your hand from the fire: psychological discomfort is a signal, too.
Impatience has an advantage. Sure, it feels uncomfortable, and it seems you'd rather have less awareness of it. But--if you're more aware of impatience, you'll know that much more about what your desires really are. To prove that that awareness is a good thing, imagine: if you didn't already know what you wanted, you wouldn't be impatient about not having it! It proves that at least your subconscious knows what you want in regard to that particular thing.
It was impatience or discomfort that gave you the clue that you already have that answer. To know what you want (or don't want) is that all-important first step. With awareness, you've gotten the biggest answer in the world! ...though it's the answer to the simplest question: "What do you want?"
First, be aware; second, decide completely; then third, you can accept the situation. Forth, be aware again to see if you really accept the situation. When you drop something, you expect it to be gone. If it's still there, you need to check to see how completely you really dropped it. Maybe there's some further decision or action still necessary before you can feel comfortable, and know that the situation is fully resolved.
(SPEED LIMIT AHEAD! Next paragraph...)
Your identity is your behavior; your behavior is your set of reactions to the world; your reactions are based on the expectations that grew from your experiences. It's all built on experiences. Now you can build that back up. You can choose the experiences that will produce better expectations. Those expectations will produce reactions that add up to behaviors that, in turn, will add up to an identity that is slightly closer to your ideal. You'll be a self-made person, created a bit at a time.
It's O.K. to have ideals that are a little bit beyond you. In fact, it's very desirable. For example: I think that to see the beauty in something, I need only look deeply enough. Well, my ideal believes that, but the rest of me seems not to. I think it, but I don't (yet) feel it. I test my thought on extreme examples like Hitler and find that I want to believe that his evil was total. It's yet another instance where thoughts and feelings disagree. I'm glad to have the ideal because it helps me define a goal that I want to move toward.
Was lil Adolf a cute baby?! The mind rebels at the thought!
New addition: My Hitler-test. I realize that it may be easier to reject a concept based on this test than what we may call a "neighbor-test". The H-test is good for an extreme bracketing, but alone, would result in a B&W conclusion. We need an H-test, but also a "nasty-neighbor-test", a "saint-test", a SuperMan test", and an "Ideal Self" test. (What would SuperMan or my ideal self do in a situation like this?)
. I trust that my ideal will pull me along toward integrating the belief that there's beauty there somewhere, even in my extremest tests, and therefore everywhere. I want to program it into a habit that I become aware of that desire at the appropriate times. Not to force a belief I "should" have, but simply one that I want as a part of my slightly-more-ideal self. To pressure myself would be an intrinsic self-criticism: "I'm wrong not to feel that." Awareness works, pressure and self-criticism don't. (and where they seem to, it's only a fascade.)
When people say you've got it all together, it feels good to know that another way to say that is "integrity"! You can see the relationship to the word "integral", meaning: all of one piece, fitted together. (ain't language fun?)
But wait a minute; just what is this "it" that we'd have together? How about: having no (well, minimal) internal contradictions. No wars going on in there. Congruity.
. It also means, as you'd expect, honesty. Transparency.
Differences, but few contradictions between the selves you
present in one place and another. And this is important:
few differences between your desires and your actions.
Therefore, *not doing what you want bespeaks a lack of integrity!
. Awareness of desire, automatically filtered through trusted intuition, yields a natural spontaniety, without crippling thought; wise and pleasurable action; sophistication without conformity to external rules. Initiative equals decision equals substance. Be solid, not jello ready for a mold.
With your built-in tendency towards health, you are always moving toward that preferred self, just a comfortable step ahead of you. When you're faced with a problem and decision, think of what your ideal self would do. Write it down on paper. "What would 'who-I-will-be' do in a situation like this?" Then do it! This is the first day of the rest of your identity!
. Be not influenced by other's roles. See them thru their shell. "Clothing makes the man" is ultimately shallow.
. For example: let's go to a ball! Imagine. Realize how you feel toward a person in a mask, especially if you only know they're one of a group of people you know. You don't know how to act. If you don't know who they are, do you know who you are? (This is why we feel more comfortable around someone who knows! If you can ever find one!) How much of that is because we react to the shells of others, not their "selves"? Are we all in disguise?! (Don't Be Borg!)