The idea of being some kind of a character can have quite an influence on us, that we can think like, you know, “This is the kind of person I am”, and sort of cast it in the role of this kind of character.
We’re playing a role, or we’re a certain character or a certain type of person.
We can be inspired by characters that we’ve seen, other people, fictional characters, and sort of imagine like “Oh, you know, I like that character.
I want to be a little bit more like that character.” But of course, we can also get locked into feeling like we’re stuck playing a certain role, stuck being a certain type of character.
And no individual role of a character is enough to capture any person, because every character is just a very selective extraction, just one sort of simplified selection of characteristics that make up a full person.
Any real person is going to be more complex than any fictional character, or even than any other- if it’s a real character, more complex than we could understand that character to be.
Because to make our individual character of a real person, a real character, everything in our lives goes into that, into making that.
So the complexity is far beyond any individual character.
And in a way, we could say well, OK, because of that, we should just forget about characters, because they’re not- they don’t capture it.
So true, we should never feel limited to just define ourselves according to one character, because we’re so much more complex than that.
But on the other hand it also means that we could see ourselves as the combination of many characters, many characters that we know about, and also characters that we can- you know, beyond even our understanding.
Mystery characters that are part of us.
You can imagine that each of us has like a hundred characters inside, and we could then name some of them and imagine some of those characters that would be simplified extractions that sort of take some aspect of our personality, and say “Oh yeah, that’s the type of character this person is.” But never just one to define us.
We could have a hundred, and we don’t even know all of them.
So we can say “Oh, you’re a little bit like this, you’re a little bit like that.
Sometimes I can imagine you in some ways like that character, in some ways like that character.
You have elements of all these different characters you can sort of imagine.
But while always remembering that there are other characters beyond what we can even understand and imagine, so that we can never fully define someone.
You can’t just make a list of a bunch of characters and say “That captures this person”, because there’s always going to be more beyond that.
But if we think about this idea of having a whole host of characters, a whole cast of characters, that is sort of ways of looking at who we are, part of the way we are, then it seems like we can have a lot of fun with this idea, that we can choose at different times to bring out different of these characters, different aspects of ourselves, by focusing on these different characters.
Maybe some of them are more serious, some are more fun, and some of them are more selfless and helpful, and others are more selfish and focused on themselves.
And we can sort of balance out all these different characters according to the situation we’re in and the need.
And of course, these existing characters that we imagine being influenced by: those are only helpful guidelines, and we don’t have to be limited to them at all.
We can be whatever kind of character that we want.
And so we can kind of take those pieces, but also make new characters.
And all of these can be sort of aspects of ourselves, ways of bringing out different parts of our personality, of our character.
So imagine every day starting as a new character.
You could be, you know, mostly the same, but maybe each day you can just be a little bit of a different person.
So that happens anyway.
Every day, as we grow older, and through the experience of every day, we are slightly different every day.
Maybe it’s so slight that you can’t even detect it usually.
But then if you don’t see somebody for years and then see them, you do see those hundreds of changes.
But imagine we can play with those changes, and just imagine that yes, with this new day, I am a new character.
I can allow myself to be a little bit different, and allow every day to be a fresh start, and with each day I can emphasize different aspects of my character and maybe bring in new aspects of my character.
So with this kind of perspective, we can have kind of a flexible view of who we are and be open to all kinds of new ways of experiencing life.
So I’d be curious to hear what you think of this idea.
#character #newday #changeeveryday