Who do I become around different people?
A song to listen while reading, Kabhi door jab din dhal jaye
While scrolling Instagram I came across what to do instead of scrolling Instagram. So here I am writing on the topic, “Who do I become around different people?”
When I read this topic, I thought of every character I’ve ever related to, all at once. I might become Amy Santiago around someone, while for others the sometimes intolerable Geet. Does that imply I am faking my personality or am I simply trying to match the frequencies in my surroundings? Becoming different around different people proves we are just mere reflections of them. However, it does not mean completely dissociating from our true self.
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But do we even have a true self? Or are we just bits and pieces of all our friends and family combined together? I can imagine myself as a window made of multiple coloured glasses, all denoting specific people in my life. Or maybe there is a plain glass at the bottom on which all those pieces are laid upon? Then all of this would make sense. We choose to show specific pieces around different people rather than showing all, somewhat like selective hearing, only this time it’s selective revealing. For example, my professor sees me as an intelligent and talkative person, but the guy I had a crush on would probably call me the most boring person on the planet. Because either I chose to show those pieces of myself in front of them, or they created an environment which caused such behaviour.
Does this mean we are made up of different personalities? This is what makes us perplexed about our own identity. William James’ idea of the ‘social self’ captures part of this, “Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him”. Being part of a society automatically imprints different behaviours on your personality depending on the person standing in front of you. Behaving a certain way in front of someone is also fuelled by various factors like past experiences, environment, energy and intellect. There is a reason why it is so easy to connect to someone who has shared a similar past as ours. Acing interviews where you are made to feel at peace is only possible because of the environment created. Instantly becoming besties with the girl you met at nineteen in your second year of college is basically energy overlapping, and being able to have long conversations exceeding over an hour with someone totally opposite to you is possible because of intellect and the mutual curiosity both the people carry. If all these people were to meet, they would probably agree on one trait about you, for example: everyone describes me as a cheerful and bright person. And I think that is the true essence of your personality: the clear window, which is further overlapped by bits and pieces of others blending into new colours. You can even chart it down by making a venn diagram and mark the most overlapped area as your true essence (I am just a nerd). Hence, our behaviour and identity is based on our interpersonal relations, and it is normal for us to become a different person with different people.
Coming back to the topic of “Who do I become around different people?”, I think I become:
A crazy laughing evil maniac for my friends.
A curious student who keeps on asking questions for my professor.
A happy but always cranky child for my parents.
A bright and smiling sun for my sisters.
A curious and empathetic but self-sabotaging person for myself.
