Who Am I? Who Are You?

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain

This is a tough subject to deal with because it touches on existence, individuality and even personality.

We are, at any given moment, at least two people. One is the person we believe we are and the other is the person someone who is with us thinks we are. If we are with more than one person, each has his or her own impression of who we are.

All are wrong.

It's impossible for us to know ourselves completely because our lives, experiences, influences, health history and so on are so complex. Others have even less data by which to understand who we are.

Now, let's consider who we think we are. Who we believe we are is the composite person we have in our head. I am me only within my own brain. No other part of me, be that external or internal, is anything more than an appendage to who I am. Each part of me is a tool I use to manipulate myself through the world I perceive for myself.

I am, in effect, a individual personality I constructed in my brain. My life is a construct based on how my brain perceives the world around it from the input it receives from my senses. My brain can accept or reject any sensory input, choosing what it wants to internalize, then add input of its own--dreams, fantasies, information from so-called sixth or seventh senses. From this my brain constructs a slightly revised version of who I am each day.

If my brain can pick and choose input it wants and add or interpret the way it chooses, then the me that presents himself to the world may come off differently from the me that my brain has devised.

I have read a few authors who claim that time they spent in prison was the most free period of their lives because behind bars they were not subjected to so much input and influence from external sources. On the other hand, most of us know of supposedly "free" people who feel they are imprisoned within their present lives.

You can be comfortable or free if that is the way you choose to think of yourself. No one controls what happens within your brain except yourself. What your brain does is who you are.
Or you can be a prisoner of the life you choose for yourself.

You will never be happy if you choose to be unhappy. You will never be successful if you refuse to accept what you do and have as success. You will never find a relationship in which you are compatible with another person if you believe that your way of life is the only one worth having.
No one else is like you. You are unique, not by birth but by choice. How much you want to share your life with another is your own choice.

Poor people can feel free and comfortable though the rest of society around them thinks otherwise. Rich people choose lives for themselves in which there is little flexibility--one course to take, no stepping off the path.

If you want comfort and happiness, choose it for yourself. When you get up tomorrow morning, look at all the marvellous things around you that are there to make your life rich and worthwhile. Choose carefully and wisely.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show that comfort and happiness are available and accessible for everyone if they choose to accept them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com