The "truth" about you is not what you say, think, or feel. It's not the impression or mask that you've successfully sold to other people. It's not your house, your car, your job, your clothes, your hair, your partner. It's not the shape of your body. It's not how sexually alluring you are, how many people you've bedded, how easily you can hook others with your sexual energy. It's not your bank account. It's not your family heritage. It isn't your nationality, your ethnicity, your religion, your sexual or political orientation. What's really confusing is that the "truth" about you is usually not even what you think of yourself. There is an intrinsic truth about who you really are that is absolutely independent of all these other factors.
Everybody's got a different read on this. People identify with this, that, or the other. Grand philosophies tell you that you are your immortal soul. Perhaps, but I've never seen it, so it doesn't help us if we're trying to define ourselves. Besides, we're always in flux, right? So how can we make a defining call on who we really are?
Life can be a confusing hall of smoke and mirrors, especially in this day and age when image is everything and an entire industry of social media exists so that we can choose to manipulate our image to conform to our own will.
It helps, perhaps, if we take a Buddhist tack. I'm not a Buddhist, by the way. Its ultimate goal of self-negation just doesn't do it for me. But it is helpful in deconstructing false images of who we might be. It's good medicine for that.
Each of us is living a story. Maybe you're heavily invested in the story of your life. Maybe you want to be the hero of your story, or maybe you want to be your own anti-hero. If you buy into the "story" of your life, you've been hoodwinked by the goddess Maya, or "illusion." Which means you're an actor in the play of life who's over-identified with their own assigned role.
The Buddhists often meditate upon their own death, and presumably thereby live their lives differently according to the insight which they've glimpsed in that meditation.
My own working definition of the moment, in the moment, is that you are your character. Not who you pretend to be, but who you really are if all your many secrets were known to the world. Because life knows all your secrets. What has happened to you, what you've done, everything you've ever thought, felt, or said, any feathery impression which has registered in your interior or exterior world, is etched into your being. It stands as it really is. You are the living sum of all those moments, and you are that this very second. That is your "truth." The reality of who you really are in this moment. Your true character, as it has been molded by all your experience of life.
You can try to avoid this truth. Most people do. They try to negate, repress, or otherwise ignore the truth of who they really are. The trouble is, all those false attempts don't really make it so. You are who you really are, this very moment, and nothing you can do will change that. Your character is the irrefutable fact of your life. And you know what? People can sense that about you, whether they're consciously aware of it or not. You don't ever really fool anyone but yourself.
That's what you take with you when you die. Not your clothes, your car, your bank account, not even the people who love you. All that you take with you when you die is your character -- who you really are the moment you die --- that is all you take with you when you go.
In some religions, you're judged by that. In truth, you are judged by life itself, for what you've done, thought, said, felt, how you made other people feel, how you effected them. There's really no tribunal in the sky. Heaven and hell are immaterial. Many spiritual philosophies say you carry who you are forward and that fashions your future. In the end, you are only judged by the character you have fashioned for yourself by your own actions and choices. And, yes, life is unfair and you had no control over what happened to you. But you always have control over your response to what happens to you. And your response creates the reality of your character.
Be that as it may, I say that the character you have earned by the way you've lived, how you've chosen to live, whether honestly, or dishonestly, or probably some muddy version of the both -- that's who you are. You define yourself not by what you achieve or who you fool. You define yourself by who you really are, and the only thing you've really earned in this life is this -- your own character.
Is that not fair? And you can change your character, if you want. All it takes is honest intent, earnest effort, and integrity of purpose. And time and diligence. Everyone can change. The worst person on earth can become the character model for all mankind, if they so choose. But do it for real. Life is not about what you can fake. It's about who you really are. If you think otherwise, well -- if you're too lazy to do the real work or you'd rather take the supposed "easy way out" -- then you're someone I will choose to avoid. Why waste time on fools?
I'm not saying you should try to be perfect. I'm not. Just be real. Others can take it or leave it but at least you can live with yourself. And that's the bottom line, at the end of the day. It is for me, anyway.
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