Are you an artist, or an athlete? Are you a woman? Let’s find out.
In this chaotic world we now live in, there are millions of people trying to identify as something they are not. And it extends far beyond race or gender. Young men set up an Instagram page or dating profile to make themselves look like a millionaire (or at least do something to show off their wealth and access to resources), and their female counterparts are more than happy to play the same game by using a filter to make themselves look like supermodels, and take 30 lbs off their weight. Who knows who started it? It’s like the chicken and the egg.
And 99% of the time, one of two things happens; 1) They meet up, and they’re both so disgusted at who each other actually are in real life, they just turn and walk the other way. (Maybe they endure a miserable lunch or an annoying cup of coffee first, just to be polite). Or, 2) In the case that the woman was faking her identity more than the man – and they both come to the conclusion that he’s the one who is ‘better’ – they fuck, and then the man either never calls her back, or he pretends to like her until something better comes along. In the first scenario, the man gets rejected on the front end, and has to go back to the old drawing board to find someone who deems his genes worthy of reproduction. And in the second scenario, the woman gets hurt on the back end, and often ends up repeating this process until at least the age of thirty.
That is modern dating, and given the cruel reality of both men and women’s ruthless sexual mating strategies, most people have no choice but to play this ugly game.
The jury is still out on whether or not there is a price to pay for pretending to be someone you’re not. For men in the dating game, it doesn’t appear that there is – at least not in the short-term.
I’m a Cat
But what about something ‘innocent,’ like when a young girl goes to school and wants to identify as a cat? Unlike the dating game – where men and women are cold-heartedly deceiving each other to get something they want – pretending to be a cat seems harmless, and doesn’t pose a threat to hurt anyone’s feeling. So why doesn’t it work?
Here’s Why;
Your identity is NOT just who/what you say you are. I’m sorry if it saddens you to read that, but your identity is originally formed and also continually influenced by a combination of factors that are occuring on both a conscious and subconscious level. It has four basic components.
Me: These are my conscious thoughts, of which the average person has about 60,000 per day. I’m handsome. I’m ugly. I’m tall. I’m short. I’m rich. I’m poor. I’m strong. I’m weak. I’m fast. I’m slow. I’m smart. I’m stupid. I’m brave. I’m cowardly. If you’re anything like me, you’ve said ALL of these things to yourself, and you may have even told yourself both antonyms in the same day.
Myself: The reason I’ve drawn a heart to represent my subconscious mind is because these beliefs are felt – on an emotional level – and they’re not as easy to control or influence as the intellectual ones from the conscious mind. When your dog dies, you cry. There is no cognitive process required to tell you how you feel, and you can’t talk yourself out of being sad. Here are a few more examples;
That girl is hot.
I can’t stand country music.
This water is really cold.
That angry bear looks dangerous. I should stay away from it.
Cockroaches are disgusting.
I love the sound of his voice.
Cheetahs can run really fast.
A young, healthy woman will be a better mother for my kids than an old, divorcee who is covered in tattoos.
That tall, handsome man driving the Ferrari will be a better provider for me and my kids than the short, fat guy in the sweat pants and sandles that just got off that city bus.
If you tried, you could use your conscious mind to override all of these thoughts that are taking place in your subconscious, but you’d struggle. Most of them are irrefutable, because they’re so deeply embedded in the unconscious that no amount of reasoning can uproot them.
Logic tells a woman to go for a stable, 9 to 5 company employee that will be a good husband and father, and a dependable provider, but the subconscious longs for the totally unpredictable superstud that already has twelve girlfriends.
* I should note that in the diagram above, everything below the horizontal line is taking place on a subconscious level – not just in my own mind – but also in ‘Everyone Else’s.‘ And although everything to the right of the veritcal line is taking place in my own mind and body, it is not independent of or immune to the influence of other people and their thoughts and opinions. These four components all have a cause and effect relationship with each other.
Wait. So can I be a cat? Or not?
You can’t be a cat, and I can explain why before I even get into the left side of the diagram.
One day a young girl (who identifies as a cat) is walking home from school, and sees a cat (an actual one) run up a tree. (A cat doesn’t even CLIMB a tree. It RUNS right up the tree, just as a little kid runs down the street). The girl says to herself, ‘Hmm. Is it just that cat that can run up a tree like that? And all the other cats and I can’t? Or can most cats do that?’
Then a few weeks go by, and she spots another cat run up a tree, and another, and another, until it finally dawns on her that she’s the only ‘cat’ that can’t do this. And at this point, it’s actually a softer blow to the ego to dissociate from being a cat entirely than it is to be the only cat in the world who can’t run up a tree. Even if there were no other people on earth, it’s likely that her own experience would eventually work this out on it’s own.
Luckily, it never takes that long, although there is even sometimes a crazy mother who calls into the school, requesting, ‘My daughter would like to identify as a cat, so I’d like to kindly ask that her teacher and all her classmates respect her identity.’
But then on her birthday, her best friend – who has been to her house several times – gets her a bag of cat food, knowing that she has an actual pet cat at home, so the gift will not go to waste. Her friend is willing to play along with this little charade. But another boy in her class, who she regularly butts heads with and thinks the whole cat thing is a joke, also gets her a bag of a cat food. The very same one. Yet for some reason, the boy gets punished for sarcastically mocking her identity. What kind of kid gets punished for buying a cat some cat food on it’s birthday? And the teacher who decides to punish the kid for his lack of compassion simultaneously reveals that she also isn’t buying into this future Batman comic book villain identity.
The identity is dependent on other people (‘You’, in the diagram) buying into it. And eventhough the teacher was ‘on her side’ and willing to respect her identity, she is the one who slips up and devastates the cat girl, because the cat girl finds out her teacher was just pretending all along, and never actually believed it. She (the teacher) dug herself a rabbit hole she couldn’t climb out of. Her only option was to keep pretending, and pretend that the sarcastic boy was actually being genuine with his birthday gift of cat food. And this is how it will go, eventually, when you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Someone close to you will divulge what they really think of you.
This brings me to the third component of my identity;
People Who Know Me: Some of these people are close friends and family, and some of them aren’t. A few people in my life truly want ‘what’s best for me,’ and are willing to encourage whatever identity I’d like to take on. But others could care less, and might even hope to see me fail. Regardless, all of the people who know me well – both friends and foes – could tell you at least a few things that would be impossible to deny; He’s got grey hair. He’s about 5’10½”. He runs pretty fast for an old, white guy. And he likes to argue with people.
These are all facts that are indisputable. If someone described you to a police sketch artist, and the cops picked you up straight away, it would be pretty tough to convince anyone (including yourself) that they’ve misidentified you.
But aside from obvious physical characteristics and personality traits, one of the things I’d like to identify as is a pretty decent golfer. And by contrasting between myself and Tiger Woods, I think you’ll see that, for most of us, our identity is a bit of sliding scale that constantly fluctuates.
Sometimes I think I’m awesome, and legitimately question why I’m not on the PGATour. Then, like many golfers – including touring professionals – the very next day I hit a few bad shots, and ask myself, “Why do I even play this stupid game? What a complete waste of time my whole life has been.” And this negative self-talk can last for a few minutes, an hour or two, or sometimes even the rest of the day, and I have to go to bed and sleep on the fact that I suck.
This is where the subconscious comes into play, as the content of your dreams often reveal some of the thoughts and feelings taking place in the unconscious mind. When I go to the park to play basketball and I’m on fire from everywhere, and that happens three days in a row, I’ll often have a dream that I’m schooling Larry Bird or Kobe Bryant in a game of one-on-one, or scoring at will on one of the NBA’s best defenders. However, after a day or two of playing like horseshit, a basketball dream will typically have me missing wide open layups and dribbling the ball off my foot, and I can’t even score on a bunch of girls.
Although, as I said, the subconscious mind is more difficult to directly influence, it is malleable, and has somewhat of a ‘what-have-you-done-for-me-lately’ element to it. But since this can work both for and against you, the gateway into the unconscious has to be guarded carefully.
Just like everyone who plays golf, even Tiger Woods occasionally hits a bad shot, and slices a drive 40 yards out of bounds. The difference is, when he does it, an immediate (and probably instinctual, for him) cognitive restructuring of his thoughts says, ‘Yeah, that was a bad shot. But I’ve also won 15 major championships.’ And his negative self-talk lasts for about 2 or 3 seconds. The rest of us tend to ponder our self-worth as a human being on this planet until we string together at least a few more good shots.
And thus – although Tiger would be the first to tell you that his game has plenty of room for improvement – his identity as a great player probably oscillates back and forth between 9.98 and 10, on a scale of one to ten. Whereas mine goes up and down almost as frequently as the sun, and ranges somewhere between 6.2 and 8.8.
So how is our identity influenced by other people?
Imagine if a man and his baby were standing next to the first tee at a golf course, watching people hit their opening tee shots. The first guy launches a drive that flies about 270 yards, easily carrying a strategically placed fairway bunker, and bounds down the middle of the fairway. Both the man and the baby think, ‘Wow, that ball went really far.’ The baby, more specifically, thinks, ‘Holy shit! I’ve never seen an object accelerate away from me so quickly and all but disappear into the sky.’
Then the next guy gets up there, and tops his drive about 15 yards, and his ball rolls right under a small willow tree that is normally never even in play on the hole. Again, both man and baby have the same automatic reaction, which is, ‘This guy sucks.’ If, by chance, both the man and the guy who topped his drive can speak English, the player can walk back to the man and say, “See that shot I just hit right there? That almost never happens. I’m actually a really good golfer.” And, perhaps, that man can say, “Alright. If you say so.”
But the player can’t use language to convey his identity as a good golfer to the baby, and even if he could, the baby would think, ‘Okay buddy. Sure you are.” Infants are still largely operating on instinctual and unconscious processes, so they can’t be ‘reasoned with’ the way adults can. It’s something like, ‘I’m hungry. I’m sleepy. I have to poo. That ball didn’t go very far, so you suck at golf.’
And, whether you’d like to admit it or not, a baby also knows whether you’re a man or a woman. (I’d be doing this post a disservice if I didn’t talk about identifying as a certain race or gender.)
Everyone Else: Just like the baby observing the two golfers hitting their drives, other people are primarily using subconscious processes to determine whether you’re a threat, an ally, a potential mate, a prospective client, a good employee, a black guy or a white guy, or a man or a woman.
When a mother Rhino roams the African plains with it’s two calves, it has to be on the lookout for predators – namely lions. If a lioness or two are anything more than a stones throw away, they are probably not a threat to the mother’s young. In fact, an attempt at an attack by just one or two female lions would surely be a kamikaze mission for at least one of them, as they’d be likely to get bulldozed and flattened by the charging mother, or gored by it’s horn.
A male lion, however, is sign of danger. The mother rhino immediately communicates to its calves, ‘See that thing right there? If there’s another one of those around, we are in serious trouble. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
And how does the rhino know the difference between a male and female lion? Easy; the males are much bigger, and they have a mane. Why must it be able to make the distinction? Because it’s paramount to its survival. And although the males and females of other species of predators aren’t as easily distinguishable as lions, it’s likely the mother rhino can tell them apart, too.
The male lion can’t just stroll through the savannah and walk right past the rhinos and say, “Oh, hey guys. Don’t mind me. I’m just a female lion.” The mother rhino will say, “No, you’re not. I know the difference. And I’ve got my eye on you.”
There is NOTHING the male lion can do to portray that it’s a female. It would have to give birth to a baby lion. But I think that would be more shocking to the rhino than if one of her own babies looked like Ace Ventura.
Since all of these animals operate predominately by instinct, they can’t be swindled into believing that something is not what it appears to be. A mother rhino observing a male lion is just like a baby human watching two golfers of vastly differing abilities hit their opening drives. And a baby human is no different from a Chinese human that can’t speak English, at least when it comes to evaluating your identity and who you are. Unable to use language to communicate, the other party has nothing but their involuntary thoughts to size you up, and they’re not responsible for anything more than that.
Consequently, it’s not going to go very well if a man dressed like Mrs. Doubtfire tries to walk into a women’s washroom in Beijing – assuming that he is being regarded as ‘female’ – and proceeds to pee all over the toilet seats. Not a single person is perceiving him to be female, and someone is already calling the police to tell them that a man dressed as a clown is peeing in the women’s washroom.
Is it narcissistic? This idea, that ‘you must confirm what I say I am?’
Some people call it narcissism. Others call it ignorance. The softest way I could describe it is a lack of awareness of how the mind works. The human brain has evolved for 2 million years, and one of its functions is to be able to differentiate between things that can kill us and things we can kill, things we can eat and things we can’t, and things that can get us pregnant and things we can get pregnant. Asking total strangers to override this hard-wiring, so that you can feel good about who you think you are, right now, today (eventhough it might change tomorrow), certainly seems at least a little self-absorbed.
But if it stopped there, I don’t think there would be much of a problem. The issue is with the accomplices to false identities and pretenders. The dad who insists everyone treat his son like he’s inevitably going to be a major league baseball player, the mother who demands that her daughter’s entire classroom act like she’s a cat, and the college dean who imposes that a male swimmer can put on a lady speedo and win women’s gold medals. These are the people who say, “But is it really that hard? It takes two seconds to be ‘kind,’ and identify them how they would like to be identified.”
Let me show you why this doesn’t work.
Let’s say, for instance, my mother always told me I’m a great guy, who will one day make a good husband and father, and every beautiful, young woman would be lucky to meet me. Additionally, my friends – even from the time I was 12 years old – have always praised how good I am at flirting with girls. And I not only genuinely believe this to be true, I’ve also seen plenty of evidence to back it up. This means I have at least three boxes checked. (Me, Myself, People Who Know Me). My conscious thoughts are congruent with all the activity taking place in my subconscious mind, and most of the people who know me also confirm that I am in fact who I say I am and think I am. Even the naysayers have to admit, ‘I can’t stand that guy. But he sure is good with the ladies.’ (None of that is true for me by the way, but maybe for some guy it is).
Well, that’s it then. I officially identify as a man who attracts beautiful women. So from now on, any girl I ever approach has to treat me as such. If I ever say, “Hey, would you like to get a drink with me sometime?”, nobody can ever say, “Sorry old man, you’re not my type.” And if they DO ever say that… Ohhhh man! Now I reserve the right to say, “Hey! Get back here! My mom told me I’m worthy of meeting a beautiful woman, and my friends all say I’m good at picking up chicks. You have to give me your number, and at least pretend you want to go on a date with me.”
You will ALWAYS struggle to convince people to believe something that contradicts the activity taking place in their subconscious mind.
Identity Success/Failure
You can identify as being or having many things; your job/profession, being skilled at something, having an admireable virtue, such us courage or kindness, or being the guy who always makes everyone laugh. And, of course, there are many things people identify with that they would do well to dissociate from, such as always being the biggest guy in the room, or the prettiest girl at the party. The reason to wave bye-bye to egotistical identities like these is because you won’t have them forever, so they leave you without any solid ground to stand on when they suddenly disappear.
I hope you’ve learned by now that your identity is made up of much more than just the things you currently think about yourself, at this very moment. And although you can at least attempt to identify as just about anything you want, here are a few ways in which you’re likely err;
1) Your subconscious mind and your conscious thoughts are not in alignment. You tell yourself you are strong, or brave, or smart, but saying these things triggers nothing but doubt. Your subconscious (sometimes in your dreams, if you can learn to remember them and put the fragmented pieces together) asks, ‘Really, though? I don’t have any reason to believe that.’
- This is a sign that you need to DO some things to impress upon your subconscious mind the things you actually say.
2) You think your intellectual mind (conscious) and your emotional mind are congruent with one another, but you’re too scared to test it, or try it out in front of other people, because anything but a total confirmation of the identity would be devastating. This is the guy who plays ping-pong, 1-on-none, by himself against the wall in his basement, or the girl who has been secretly practicing the saxophone for three years, waiting for the perfect time to blow everyone away with this new skill she’s learned ‘overnight.’
- You’re a big fish in a small pond – maybe even the only fish – and nobody has any idea you identify with this thing but you. You need to go test out some deeper waters, and allow yourself to be vulnerable. You might realize you aren’t quite as good as you think you are, but it’s the only way you’ll continue to improve. Trust me on this one. You might be a guy who thinks he’s awesome just because he can juggle three balls, and on your 50th birthday, when you decide to finally show off your skill, you realize that 4 out of the other 6 people in the room can do that, too.
3) You’re one of the extremely rare people in the world who truly know who they are, what their purpose in life is, and exactly what they should be doing with their time when they wake up in the morning. But friends, family, relatives, teachers and guidance counsellors all tell you you’re crazy and stupid for doing what you’re trying to do, and you should just get a real job.
- Tell each and every one of them to go fuck themselves. They are trying to talk you out of doing something you already know you need to be doing, possibly because their own lives will be worse if you try and fail. Don’t listen to them. You are willing to fail a thousand times and keep throwing yourself back into the fray, so who cares what they think. Unlike most people, you’re good, now! You do not require the verification of other people or a miraculous event to take place in the future to feel good about who you are, so don’t look for it or ask for it.
4) You’re not sure what to identify as. It’s not only that you’re conscious and subconscious mind are continually grampling with each other, but it seems like both are in a state of constant flux all the time. One day it appears perfectly clear who you are and what you’re supposed to do, but hours later things have never seemed fuzzier. The next day, you’re the girl who was ‘meant’ to get both arms and all ten fingers totally tattooed, or you’re the guy who’s going to stop the earth from getting warmer, but can’t stop the ants on your messy kitchen counter from getting into your cereal boxes. Maybe tomorrow you’d like to put on a dress and a wig, just to see what the fuss about being a girl is all about. And you might even decide that you’re a cat.
- All of these things are perfectly fine, as long as they don’t start to compromise other people. Life is hard. Sometimes there’s a lot of trial and error involved in trying to figure things out. You are free to experiment with however many identities you feel you can take on. Just don’t ask that other people temporarily play along with the fickle image you have of yourself, because they’re not going to anyway.
Well then. What is YOUR identity?
You might find that your life is best lived when you identify with nothing at all. You’re just pure consciousness. It’s a pretty good deal. You’re not forced to contemplate whether you’re a good father, or earn enough money, or can beat your best friend in an arm wrestle. You just sit next to a stream, with your back against a rock or a tree, and listen to the sound of the water. Sometimes an eagle will swoop down and snatch a fish out of the water. And maybe you’ll see that happen so many times that you can even tell whether that eagle was male or female. A rhino would know.
Or, you may want to attach your identity to something you can spend your whole life trying to strengthen, like your job, your family, or how well you can hit a golf ball. And that’s okay, too. Just realize that you’re not going to be smelling roses the whole time, and there are going to be plenty of ups and downs. But remember the diagram above. Conscious, unconscious, people who know me, and everybody else. Start small, and focus on the first two, first. And don’t worry so much about the last one. It will take care of itself later. But if you can feel fairly good about how you identify in at least three of these four quadrants, you probably have a pretty firm identity you can hang your hat on.