Shift Happens

Every now and then I find myself… not being myself anymore and not really sure of who myself is.

I’m old enough these days to realise that this is a natural shift which happens often due to a change of circumstances, or some penny finally dropping once you’ve had time to process a bunch of data you collected while experiencing a life event, maybe you’ve crossed a threshold, started a new chapter, achieved a goal, realised a dream, turned a corner, had a rug pulled out from under your feet, fallen down a rabbit hole, your plans have gone awry, something unexpected occurred, you’ve been thrown off course, etc, and therefore it is not a matter of concern, no need to get my knickers in a twist about it unless I’d enjoy doing that (‘enjoy’ is probably the wrong word to use but it wanted to be used so I obliged).

When I was younger it often felt like the end of the world if I didn’t know who I was…

if I didn’t know who I was how could I know anything at all about…

anything,

anyone…

we build so much upon the idea we have about who we are, on a fixed personality who will never leave us… so when it leaves us we’re left with a structure that has no foundation… at least not the one upon which it was built.

So… now what.

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by Robert Crumb

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In those earlier days of my life this kind of shift would feel like a loss and I’d go through a form of the stages of grief to deal with it (or avoid dealing with it, trying desperately to stop what was happening from happening without fully comprehending that once something has started to happen it’s a bit too late to stop it from happening… and chances are it started happening long before you noticed that it had started to happen, its beginning was long before your beginning point for it).

Now that I’m older (and thankful for many of the aspects of aging)…

the older you get the harder it can be sometimes to be physically flexible, but strangely enough you get more mentally flexible, you’re less rigid about rules, less prone to keeping a tight leash on things and people, you cut more slack…

if your usual self goes astray, it probably had its reasons, it was time for it to go, it… isn’t really needed anymore.

Sure, it made itself feel like it was needed, because personality tends to do that, it’s an insecure thing, has self-esteem issues which is solves by superficial means, like getting as many likes or followers or other forms of approval as it can while saying none of those matter to it, it is so dependent on being depended upon while claiming to be independent, always trying to improve itself, jumping on the latest bandwagon, trend, being mindful, authentic, real, radical, while conforming to the rules others have set out for those things yet saying it’s a rebel, being constantly critical, in critical condition, of itself, of others because others are its mirror, for comparing, contrasting…

and it loves taking tests which will reveal itself to it.

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by Sergio Aragones

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This morning I tried taking a personality test which someone claimed was – THE most accurate personality test ever! – my guess is it was the test which made that claim to sell itself… even personality tests have personalities and this one’s was rather needy of attention thus it took the popular route to get that by aggrandising itself.

The reason I said that ‘I tried taking’ it is because I always find tests to be a bit of a trial which I try to do but then at some point I begin to wonder what’s the point until that wondering takes over, I stop listening to the questions, start answering randomly without caring about accuracy or being true to myself, and the whole thing becomes pointless…

It was fun to take for the first few questions but then I reached this one…

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test bite from Visual DNA Free Insightful Personality Test

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and none of these images were the answer to this question for me…

which meant that if I wanted to continue with this particular personality test I needed to pick one and…

to pick one I had to figure out what the test-maker thought these images represented…

that reminded me of playing Zork many years ago and trying to figure out what words would get the hand of my character into the hole to get whatever was glinting in there. None of the options I tried worked and I never did figure it out so that was the end of that game for me…

and which one came close to the image I had in my mind (which was blank but calm about the future). I chose the bubbles… tbh I have no idea what the test-maker meant by that image, I was bored of trying to figure their thinking out and I either picked something or quit the test.

I did that with many of the questions and their optional answers – just picked something to move on to the next – as by degrees I realised that the answers I wanted to give were not included as options (that happens a lot to me in personality tests).

This was my result:

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which made me chuckle because…

no, duh… anyone taking a personality test is pretty much by default ‘a seeker’.

I have this sneaking suspicion that I’ve taken this test before… and may have even blogged about it… while going through another who am I episode…

Who am I?

Who are you?

Does it matter?

Underneath everything we use (and sometimes abuse) to define who we are is a core beingness which just is… and which is often hampered by the notion, and the notions about the notion, of – being yourself.

Can you be yourself?

Aren’t you yourself whether you be it or not?

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via Musterni Illustrates

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Or do you have to actively make an effort to be who you are… what happens if you don’t?

That’s where I’m at… at the what happens if I don’t stage.

I have probably done this before…

doing the not doing thing thing…

I can’t recall what happened when I didn’t do it previously…