How I See Myself

“To be able to create our identity in terms of who and/or what we really are, we have to find out through individual interpretation and understanding of certain terms and connotations of language” (Fuss 1995; 233-240).

For my anti-self-portrait project, I asked my friends and family to describe me with their own words. Asking them to use language helped define different aspects of my personality. They used words like, “introspective,” “smart,” and “stubborn” to describe me. As the individual, I can interpret their meaning and gain an outside understanding of how I presebt myself through their choice of language.

Introspective, very self-aware. My best friend mentioned this, and she’s referencing countless times we stay up until 3 in the morning at sleepovers trying to figure out why we think and act the way we do. When I’m meeting new people or I’m in unfamiliar social settings, I’m thinking simultaneously about how I’m coming across to people (Am I being funny? Am I being friendly? Am I saying too much? Is it not enough to make an impression?). Sometimes I’m too trapped in this insecure, self-concious frame of mind that I don’t say much to someone I’m meeting for the first time.  

Smart. Every person that has known me for a year or more used “intelligent” or “hard working” to describe me. They experienced every day that I would spend my free period rereading the chapter we had been assigned in English class and every night I would leave dinner early to get the last few Calculus questions done before my favorite television shows came on at 8. They saw every sigh of relief at a good grade and every meltdown when I became overwhelmed with self-imposed stress.  My family, who had been with me through my high school career saw this side of me; this side of me, my work ethic and academic performance, is slowly showing in my personality to my new friends that I met at Bryn Mawr. 

Stubborn. My brother mentioned this aspect of my personality, and I would actually couple this with the “loyalty” my dad mentioned to describe me. It’s hard to change my mind if I am passionate and unbending about my beliefs and morals. When my mind was set that I would get the filming and editing for this project done in one afternoon, I worked out the times in my schedule, talked to everyone I wanted to interview, and got it done.

When the idea of self-performance was first presented to me in class when we read The Complete Persepolis  by Marjane Satrapi. When she lived abroad, she let her friends influence her perception and she altered her performance of herself in order to be accepted and integrated into European society. Once she was back in Iran, she felt alienated by her newfound Western identity. Before going to Europe, Satrapi’s grandmother told her to, “Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself” (Satrapi 2003; 150). However, it takes a deviance from this advice for Satrapi to realize what she truly believes in. She allows others to influence her, and in this way, realizes other parts of her personality. She uses her experiences as a foundation for the woman she becomes. From her multitude of experiences, she defines her morals and creates a version of herself that is more true.

This anti-self-portrait project gave me a chance to discover if my understanding of how I present myself to others correlated with their perception of me.

I’m quiet in the classroom but talkative when I’m back in my dorm; I’m very emotional internally but even-tempered externally; I’m confident to my family and friends but timid when meeting new people.

These contradictions in my personality dictate how I perform in a variety of social settings. When I’m in a social setting where I know people on a more comfortable level, I am more comfortable conversing with them freely and revealing different, deeper aspects of my personality. The presentation of my self becomes easier for me and easier for others to see.

In an essay on the phenomenology of consciousness, Hegel explains that self-consciousness “must set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order to become certain of itself and must secondly, proceed to sublate its own self, for this other is itself” (Hegel, 2013). So, parts of my personality, whether they make themselves apparent or not, are a reflection of other’s around me. These parts of other’s personalities had intertwined and joined to influence who I am today and will continue to as long as I live.

When my best friend Evelyn and I met, we were both anxious, insecure, and hopelessly lost high school freshman. We were a floor below where our physics classroom was when she said, “Oh no, looks like we’re stereotypical freshman!” I looked at this girl I’d never met before, laughing at the stressful (as I perceived it) situation we’d gotten ourselves into, and found myself laughing as well. It was then when I started to feel the similarities that have kept us so in-tune to each other, even four years later. In the video, I asked Evelyn to describe her first impression of me in a concise answer. She looked directly into her webcam at the digital projection of me on the other side and said, “You were a reflection of me.” Right when we met, she saw a part of herself in me. Like her, I was the quiet, shy, smart girl too. That realization that we were both similar in that way, is the idea that self-consciousness is “sublate its own self, for this other is itself.” Those parts of each other’s personality were easy to identify because we recognized them in ourselves as well.

My brother Dennis told me that when we were young, I used to “rather annoyingly” follow him around the house. He’d grow ever more irritated when I’d try to play with him. He’d throw a tantrum, run to my mom, and complain that I was “touchin’ his stuff.” His three-year-old else struggled with the idea that the second-born was threatening his hold on our parent’s attention and ridding him of his independence. But with hindsight, his twenty-one-year-old self told me it was nice that I had wanted to emulate him.

To this day, I’m still looking to emulate him. With his Dean’s List recognition every semester, his leadership endeavors (he runs several clubs on his campus), and his ability to selflessly give money, time, or friendship to others – why wouldn’t I want to be led by his example? These traits are what I admire most about my brother. This idea of a person’s personality being based on another’s can be described through Hegel’s notion that “[personality] is a consciousness existing on its own account which is mediated with itself through an other consciousness…” (Hegel 2013) In other words, part of my personality is based strictly on what I can extract from other personalities. Together, they create a consciousness of self that I try to express in the way that I am living. To me, realizing these benevolent qualities of other’s personalities, like Dennis’s achievements and Evelyn’s optimism, and trying to emulate them, will improve the parts of my personality where I see that achievement or optimism is lacking. This self-consciousness and awareness of other’s personalities has become a way I can realize my own definition of self. Meditating on these better parts of other’s personalities helps me reflect on the better or worse facets of my own personality.

So this leaves me with the question: is our personality essentially our own or is it a reflection of what we see in others?

From the stories of my best friend and brother, I can conclude that my personality is not entirely my own. I am a reflection of what I see in others. Hegel wrote that self-consciousness “must on the one hand be strictly kept apart in detailed distinctiveness, and, on the other, in this distinction must, at the same time, also be taken as not distinguished” (Hegel 2013). So, although important parts of myself mirror those I admire, I have enough individuality that I can distinguish myself from them.  I am my own person. This duality of my personality makes up my identity because the person I perceive myself to be and the person that others perceive me as is the same. My personality is a reflection of others and it is essentially my own. 

I interviewed my friends and family so I could use their words to paint a picture of myself for others to see. From their description I have learned, although language can have many understandings and connotations, that my friends and family could describe only one person: me.

Bibliography

Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive    

Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.

Hegel, George Wilhelm Frederich. "A: Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness:

Lordship and Bondage." The Phenomenology of Mind B: Self-Conscious. marxists.org.

Web. 5 Oct 2013. 

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Paris: L'Association, 2003. Print.