Fluid/Self
Summoning my best impression of Po from Kung-fu-panda…who am I?
Its a new year, and while I know its an artificial construct created as a by-product of us following a particular calendar AND we could easily be still stuck in 2023 if we just followed something else, imagine choosing a different calendar, so that you’re stuck in 2020 lol and still 20 years old, and ahem…in 2020? Doesn’t sound like a good idea anymore, does it. (EDIT — This part was written in January, hence the “its a new year”)
The last year has been a blur, while I am mentally still starting out my life in Hyderabad in my first job, I am actually already leaving the city and moving to a new job. (UPDATE — I have shifted to Noida, its been one month, and it sucks, HYD>>>>>NCR)
Amongst all the madness of the past year, I have started to lose track of any sense of self image that I had. Whatever I used to think that I can do or the values I thought are set in stone for me, are actually turning out to be fuzzy and quite fluid.
Its been an year of, Oh I don’t do that, I have never done that before, I am not that type of guy. TO — oh well, let me give it a shot, what could happen, TO — Oh, I CAN do this, I actually enjoy doing this, why didn’t anyone tell me about this before!!!? Often this does lead to me having a mental breakdown because I see so many possibilities in the future about things that I can do and so possible MEs I can be, that I almost freeze about what I should be?
I don’t remember my childhood a lot, since it feels very static, life was very static, I WAS VERY STATIC through the years ( On a side note, whenever I start thinking about my childhood in these blogs, it makes me sound like I am giving a therapy session to myself lol and psycho-analyzing the shit out of myself). My personality didn’t change a lot. I had a particular personality, shaped through my experiences (OR a lack of them actually in retrorespect). Just go to school, study ( or pretend to study? I kinda always resorted to self-study more ), come home, play video games/watch cartoons, maybe study some more. I didn’t have much or really any hobbies to shape my personality, and what’s weirder is that I didn’t even think about trying to expand my mono dimensional personality into something more vibrant and easier to sustain in the longer term. And this is something that I have observed quite a bit around me nowadays, and it honestly scares me, knowing how easy it is to fall into this trap of….just remaining as is.
Now not to say that you shouldn’t remain static, there are some things which define who you are, your core values, your constants, things that make you who you are. Unless you find something very wrong about them, I feel it’s okay, and probably even helpful to not change a lot on these, since you would probably just be changing a big part of yourself based on some minor, fluctuating, ephemeral feeling of being influenced by someone who you think is cool, or thought patterns/processes which seem cool in the moment, but in the long term, they don’t really align with you and will only confuse you more than anything.
Apart from these core values though, I have come to believe that you should be up and ready to change anything and everything about yourself. I have found it very liberating and honestly just fun, to know that I can be whatever I want to be, and am not limited by the person I am or was in the past. It’s fun to know that I can change my life in any manner however I want to change it. There are sooooo many new things to learn, so many ideas to get exposed to, and just so many things to think and process and believe and un-believe that having a fluid-self is both rewarding and self-preserving.
To end this post, I feel like every time I write such posts, and then come back to them years later, I am surprised by the thoughts that used to occupy my mind at the time of writing, and often end up with me being like “ah this kiddo has no idea what is going to happen with him”. But that is the point ain’t it, of having a fluid/self?
Until the next one — So long!
