This entire thing is likely going to come out as complete nonsense as it is not even 8:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. But if I don’t write this down now, I’ll likely forget when I get up to go to the bathroom. That new bathroom sanitizer scent has magical powers, I tell you.

Everyone, regardless of individual differences, struggles with self-perception. At least I would wager to make that bet. In a postmodern world where we have the luxury of contemplating such things as our self image and who we would would “like to become,” I think these are relevant topics of discussion. I just never bother with them because they broadcast an immediate signal of fake intellectualism and haughtiness, neither of which I’m striving for here. Much of my sadness recently has been centered around these conflicts of self. And while I try not to write about topics such as these anymore, I now wonder if this internal dissension is shared on a more communal level.

I’ve determined that (for me) complications of self-image can fall into three categories: who we see ourself as ideally (who we want to be), who we actually are (true self), and who we are trying not to be (who we are afraid of becoming). The interaction, the discrepancies between them and the grey areas in between are where this battle lies.

As a post-boomer-era adult, I know that I struggle with the same issues as others. Raised in a middle-class home, a child a relative privilege, I grew up with little character-building strife only to become an adult who yearns to know who I am, what my true self is. With no real defining tests early in life, it is no wonder I am 26 years old with relatively no concept of who I am…just who I want to be and who I’m afraid I am…unfortunate shadows and projections of my actual self. I ache for the unification of all three planes of existence.

What I am unsure of is how to unite these. Do the mergers of who I want to become and who I’m afraid of being combine to create the person of who I actually am? Or does this middle state already exist? And are we meant to go through our life trying to pin down with our little thumbs a state of being that isn’t even meant to be actualized? This is getting to wishy-washy. Perhaps examples will help.

Let’s say that I ultimately want to be a person who does not complain, no matter what life hands him. I want to be someone who is moderate in all things, responsible and follows love above all else. However, I am afraid that I am someone who buckles under hardship, someone who is weak and would choose comfort over anything.

With the first and third “planes” established, where does that leave the second, the middle stage of “who I actually am?” Is it by default an average of the first and third, meaning that I am in reality not quite as bad OR good as I fear/want? Or is the reality of it that I just flipflop between the first and third extreme on a situational basis? Does #2 only exist because #1 and #3 do? Or are 1 and 3 simple by-products of the second stage because all that truly matters is who we actually are based on our actions?

I am at a loss. I feel like the discussion of this is all for naught, a mere indulgence in a western luxury of even having time to think of such navel-gazing things. I simply don’t want to live my life regretting who I think I am and feeling guilty for not being the person that I want to be.

This topic is escaping me now. Maybe I need to abandon it and revisit it later…