Be Yourself

All our lives we have been asked the question, “who are you?”. And we reply without a moment’s hestiation “I am Asish Panda. Software developer at Monster Inc. 28 years old”. Does it really say who you are? Or just a snapshot of yourself?

Okay let see from another angle. You like car. And you got your the big money that you were expecting from your client. You take the trip down to the car dealer shops. You have few choices in mind. The specs of these car were amazing and you can’t wait to try it out.

You try the first one. It was the best from your shortlisted cars. But the story after driving it is disappointment.

You were sure this car would be the best. You get little sad. On the plus side there are still 3 more cars left.

You drive them in order. The one whose specs were average gave you the best experience. It was not expected. But it is what it is. So you decide to go and buy that car.

Now we are like cars. While introducing someone, we tell them our specs. If I was 25 years old working in Apple as a director, then I am like the car who just seems the best.

But is it so? You can only be sure after you have talked to me. Or interacted with me in some way.

The best introduction are interactions of sorts. Not your specs.

Having said that, by this logic to find out who you are you need help from someone else. After all, while interacting you also observe your behavior. Which hints at the question “who am I?”

But do we really need someone else to know ourselves? It was the act of interaction whcih revleaved something in us. How can we interact without anyone’s help?

Do we really need interaction to find out the hints to our question?

Turns out, you don’t. Interaction certainly helps. But to find out more about you, you need to go to your depths.

One of the ways I employ is that I observe my emotions.

Do you like football? Hockey? Cricket? Which one is excites you more?

When you feel afraid, what are you afraid of? Who gets afraid?

When you turn your attention to your self you find out quite number of things. What you are doing now is observing yourself while you take decisions unconsciously. Most of our auto-matic reactions form after we have “overcome” those struggles.

Take driving for example. When you were learning to drive, you were consciouns the whole time. You observed each of your action. Learnt from it and improved yourself. And after few weeks or months you stopped observing your driving. Because you were already driving fine. You have overcome the struggle of driving.

So the unconscious decisions you take are similar. You have already observed them and formed a solution and handed it to the unconscious.

For skills like driving it works fine. Because they are skills. But for emotions, reactions and choices it doesn’t. These are not something to “overcome”. They are different. Many times your unoncsious will make the right decision for you. But not always. Especially with regards to emotions. So next time you get angry or sad or fearful be sure to observe your self. It will tell more about yourself.

All this while you are observing and turning your attention inwards, you will think “who is the one observing and reacting?” Are they different or the same? Thats a hard question to answer. When I was a kid I used to have an imaginary friend. The symbol I put on my friend was Mario. Yes the video game character. It was probably because it was a game I used to play in my video game console.

So this imaginary friend I used to have conversation with him. It was like talking to a friend. Whenever I tried to understand something I used to ask him and he would present me different opinions. He would make comments, jokes, mockery.

I am not sure since when but that imaginary friend went away. But who was it?

This imaginary self for me represented a part of my depth. It steered me to things that excited me.

There is an anime called “Blue Lock” which has a similar concept. I remembered about my imaginary self after watching it.

Talking to this part of self reveals your depth. We all have them but they disappear as we grow. But they are here and we just have to ignore the noise to find its signal.

So who are you then? Your sum of emotions, imagination, behavior and whatever other words we have in store? Thats a way to put it but it doesn’t really say anything.

In the academic world there is the theory that everything was created after Big Bang. And in the vast scale of time we are alive for just a tiny fraction of a moment. In the vast space. Even if we are not here Earth and universe will continue to be. And our exsistence really doesn’t matter.

But I am really skeptical of such a sad view of looking at things. The most beautiful, simple and extraordinary stuff in this universe is not its vastness or sun’s energy or blackhold mystery. It is our consciouness.

Everything exsists because we are. If we weren’t what use is the universe? It is like an map of a videogame full of mountains, buildings and treasures. But no players.

Its not universe that gives birth to us but its us that gives birth to universe.

This radical thinking has little scientific explaination. If you told me this 3-4 years before I would have laughed it off. I was a hardcore believer of scientific theory. I still am.

But more I drink the juice of science the more I realise how absurd our universe is. We just label this absurdness as coincidence. the chances of life is less than 0.000000000000001 percent. I made this number up but I am sure its less than that.

I don’t believe in exsistence of God. If anything like God exsists, its within us. Not outside. NOt sitting on a throne of universe controlling each aspect of it.

So we give birth to the universe. Don’t let anyone say anything otherwise. If we aren’t here universe exsistence disappears.

And yet we haven’t addressed the answer to the question “who am I?”

You are. “I am”. It is not something to be written or expressed in words. Instead it is to be experienced. The experience strengthens as you delve deep. As you keep your imagination active. As your dreams