Do I?
It's been three and a half years and yet a post from October '05 keeps coming back to me. I just birthed this poem, under the influence of that piece.
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For Better For Worse.
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Don't we all convince ourselves
that we are one thing or another?
And don't we also choose to display
choice self portraits for each other?
Friday, October 28, 2005
Role 'Em
By Rabbi Neil Fleischmann
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Recently I read an article (Storyteller at Work: 'Mark Twain Tonight!' and as Ever - New York Times, June 10, 2005) about Hal Holbrook's one man show that he's been doing for years. The point was made that he's been playing Mark Twain longer than Sam Clemens played Mark Twain. The idea of the author was that Mark Twain was a persona. Similarly, I read recently (The Thing About My Folks; Agitation and Anxiety Are All in the Family -September 16, 2005) that in his new movie with Peter Falk, Paul Reiser plays Paul Reiser. The writer kind of paused, then added - well, the character that we've always been shown as Paul Reiser.
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It's a fascinating concept, that we all have personas. In a book about cleaning up clutter (written specifically for right side of the brain people) the author suggests that you say to yourself, "I am an organized person." At first this sounded absurd to me. But don't we all convince ourselves that we are one thing or another? I know I have done this in many ways for better and for worse. And don't we all also choose to put forward certain dispositions in the world?
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 6:08 AM
3 Comments:
Interesting. One of the things that has most irked and bemused me as an adult is that I've felt I encompass multiple Annes. Not as in totally separate personalities, but different personas (personae?) based on the situations and people around me at a given time.
One of my great tasks since my mid 30s has been to attempt to integrate those different Annes into one (complicated, but unified) persona. I believe I'm getting there.
And, curiously, my blog has helped in that regard. People who might know me as the Catholic church-lady Anne now also know me as Star Wars fanatic Anne and rock-n-roll Anne. By putting myself "out there" in the blogosphere, I've allowed my sometimes contradictory-seeming facets to collide in a single entity. I think.
What do you think? Where and how do you present the whole Neil Fleischmann, if anywhere?
What's wrong with having different facets to your personality, which you share with only some people or with none?
Hi Kishke: I actually don't think there is anything wrong at all about having different facets and sharing them with those most sympatico.
What I disliked was feeling more like an eclipse than a revolving disco ball: You either saw the bright side of my personal moon (no snickering pls!) or the dark side. First I had to train myself to stop labeling traits and behaviors as simply "bad" or good" which took several decades and quite a bit of therapy. Then I needed to identify destructive behaviors and try to modify or discard those, while still embracing some of the wild, free spirit at my core and being comfortable with sharing that.
It's complicated. :-)
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