The Change. To Question.

Identity

[thoughts depicted in the passage below have been a result of a debate, an on-going debate trying to rediscover truths. Hence, they are purely my view and are not in conflict with any other. These are open to discussion and criticism. However, I have used first person plural in this passage. Oh btw, the debate has been with myself, questioning the very purpose of what I’ve seen.]

· When we are the same everyday, we seem to find ourselves on a monotonous ride, a ride that seems to take us on the path that we all expect. If there is a deviation, we know it has risen out of the irregularities, something that is not intended. I thought undergoing a change, an identity will add a new dimension, in the way we would wish it to be. But we are never really sure if that change benefits us, in a way to change the irregularity. The seconds are just coming, the very blink of an eye is a moment. What we are missing is the instant that we miss during the blink. If that is what we are missing, how many instances have we missed every time our eyes are closed?

· Here’s an excerpt from ‘Waking Life’:

Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.

I can recollect the caustic words of my roommate's girlfriend, probably out of striving and frustration ‘if a guy cannot risk his life for his girlfriend, then he isn’t worth to be the one.’ The words would have come out of the desire for survival, surviving with the one she wants but there is a person at the receiving end and does the same run through his mind? He has a feeling he is living for and if he is questioned, then he begins to question his own frustration. Everything seems normal but there is a loophole rooted within that little gap of communication that brought an end to their relationship. So the question is: do we have to be a different person to confirm our existence? And if we do undergo a change, are we solving the purpose that actually failed last time or do we have to when we know we aren’t wrong? We know what we are and yet we do not understand. We now need the right symbols to communicate with.

· Disconnecting with one’s own self has its consequences. Imagine being bombarded with praise or insults or associating yourself with ruthless aspects of your existence. It begins to affect your routine in commonplace. We steer our routine based on what we see around us. If you are staring at a black cloud and hoping for sunlight while others hope for rain, you are not the common man, you have disconnected yourself and you are waiting to see a change.

· There is always something called a blind-belief. If the odds are zero, you seem to think you hit a dead-end. There is something beyond the end. We need a path to penetrate the impossible. If you have accepted that the odds are zero and moving on [with or without a clue with what’s ahead], and if you are of the opinion the path ahead is visible, then there is a chance we are blinded by the light. If darkness blinds us, so can light. The odds are balanced. The way we take it. To make our chance even, it has to be belief. Call it blind or deadened?

I dented my identity to see myself. Way back in may, I decided to follow my belief, for a reason. Though the coin flipped rendering the belief blind, I’m looking and giving myself a chance to experience the difference. And the change is: no hair, no moustache. Call it a dent! I have to justify this. [another excerpt from ‘Waking Life’: You haven't met yourself yet. But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself. Examine the nature of everything you observe. For instance, you might find yourself walking through a dream parking lot. And yes, those are dream feet inside of your dream shoes. Part of your dream self. And so, the person that you appear to be in the dream cannot be who you really are. This is an image, a mental model.]

A woman talks about Benedict Anderson's view on Identity:

Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity.

And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.

Hmm.