Who sees the real you?

Bit of a deep one for you today. I’m gonna be honest with you, I’m writing this in between watching Nashville (like when it’s buffering) so it may be slightly bitty. Just so you don’t feel left out of the video-watching club, here’s a video by Soul Pancake (a Youtube channel).

As you can probably tell, this video is what prompted me to write this post.*

*I can’t come up with deep subjects like this all on my own.

Anyway, it really got me thinking about who sees the real me (funnily enough) and I thought I’d just pour out all my thoughts into this blog in an attempt to see it more clearly. Does that make sense? I feel like this post is just going to drag me deeper into the void of self doubt. Ah well, as long as it isn’t too long…

The first thing I thought when I watched this video was: What does see mean? It could mean understanding and really knowing a person, or it could be mean, like, literally seeing. I’m guessing the video is focusing on the former because it’s deeper and easier to add emotive background music to.

In that sense, I don’t think anyone sees ‘The Real Me’ because I’m not sure who that person is. Before you start to think I’m going to go off on some longggg tangent about finding myself and Jesus and self-acceptance and all that stuff, I’m not. Because I don’t think I’m there yet. Or more accurately, I don’t think this ‘there’, this final destination, is even on my map. I think we’re all a lot of people. We’re who the person you’re interacting with needs, we’re who a certain decision needs to be made, we’re who we need to be to get through the day.*

*Can you tell I’ve read Gone Girl?

And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being a different person with different people because everyone does it. Maybe it’s not very noticeable in a lot of people, but sometimes it’s just little things. For example, someone may react differently to a question depending on who’s asking and what the consequence of their answer will be, or someone may laugh at a joke they would never find funny in a different situation.

I am a lot of people. I’m a typical, hard-working student in Biology, I’m an argumentative feminist in Politics, I’m a frustrated failure in Maths, I’m an annoying big sister with my brothers, I’m an ill patient at the doctors and an exhausted teenager in my room.

So no-one sees ‘The Real Me’ because I’m never all of those things at once and I’m never in a situation where I need to be.

Just writing this, I’ve come up with an idea. Whenever you feel yourself being one of your ‘many selves’, think to yourself ‘Who/what am I being this person for?’. When the answer is ‘me’, then you’ve found yourself.