Who am I?

Of course I knew that. It's not like I'm living my life without a deeper thought crossing my mind. I have thought about myself and why I do the things I do and why I do them the way I do and how I perceive the world and people around me... What did happen this past Monday, though, was that my perspective changed. As if I turned 180 degrees and got a different view at things. Or something like this. I realized a very basic thing - something that most people know, at least to some extent, but maybe not so many of us actually use this knowledge so much. The fact that what I, me, myself think/feel/believe may not necessarily be: 1. universal 2. true 3. effective - the list could go on. I'm not speaking here about simple things - like a situation when somebody insists that you cannot possibly hate this color/cake/dress/house/fill-in-the-space because this is so beautiful/delicious/elegant/etc... (although it is surprising how many of these simple ones one has to hear in one's lifetime!) I'm talking here about a very big picture, about how we perceive the world and people around us from our very specific point of view without often realizing how much we add to everything, how many preconceived notions we bring to everything.

It's not inherently bad, this is how we cope with the complexity of life we need to face every day - we build on our experiences, learn from our actions and their outcomes, draw conclusions, we construct a truly amazing, intricate structure that helps us analyze, understand, and deal with many completely new situations that life often brings. The hidden problem may be that some of it happens subconsciously, we just add little pieces and bits here and there and may not keep track of every connection, every little question and answer, observation and conclusion, problem and solution. After a while we may lose any sense of where all this has come from, what the pieces are. Even worse, you start to treat your structure as a constant, not a variable. I guess we wouldn't be able to live without forming some kind of stability in our perceptions. The thing we have built becomes a force that drives our life more than we would ever imagine. How can one possibly step out of all this baggage of experiences and thoughts and judgments... many of which are often so imprecise and subjective. After a while we start thinking this is how the world works - this must be it, we have confirmed it so many times, we have observed and touched and smelled and burned our fingers - we KNOW, we just KNOW that this or that is normal, whatever that can mean.

Now, as I said, I knew that. I knew that I was always, for as long as I remember, thinking or feeling that nobody could possibly be interested in me just for me, without wanting something from me, without some kind of exchange. I think I have tried very hard to make myself more, in many different ways, believing that just simple plain me would not be enough to interest anyone. After all, you want value for your money. So I have tried to be prettier, smarter, more creative, more sophisticated than I felt I truly was. The fact that I see how this has been happening does not change the fact that I still have the structure deeply embedded in my soul. I cannot see how I could ever change something that has become as natural for me as breathing. I don't know how to see things differently. I don't know if I can reach deep enough to find just me, without all these things I've added. How much are they 'me' now? What if I don't like them? Is there a core part of a person at all? What if I wouldn't like it if I found it? I think I have always tried to make myself more likable and acceptable and interesting not only to other people but also to myself. It seems that I have never liked myself too much.