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We all have multiple faces, don’t we? We are different for everyone, it is not something we do cautiously but automatically, based on our experience with that person, our behavior changes. I feel it is something that we never give attention to but we are different for our parents, our best friend, our colleagues, our boss, our friends, our not so close friends, and the world.
Generally, when we think about a certain person, we imagine the environment that will be around us, when we will be with that person. Based on this image we either get excited or demotivated to go and meet or reach. These different environments induce or appeal to varied sides of our personality, and we act accordingly. Unfortunately, the way we behave is something intertwined subconsciously to our memory library, and not only our reactions but the thoughts that knock on our head are also different when we are with a different person.
I wonder, when people say that life is about having power over our thoughts, is it the power to blank our mind and completely cut-off certain thoughts, or is it the realization that irrespective of how the thought is bad, good, elating, or terrifying, it is us who is more powerful and let it pass?
I don’t know about the first if it is possible to do all that time, but the second one looks more reasonable to me. The fact that we have no control over the origination of thoughts in our mind, doesn’t mean that we cannot stop them from overpowering us.
Do you watch movies?
Even if not a big fan, you might have seen some in the past. What was the last movie you saw? Considering the lockdown, I feel there is a little chance that you saw it in a theatre. Corona was and is still a boon to (Over-the-top) OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Theatres were closed, and human’s hunger for entertainment is endless, they personalized that experience for each person using the power and reach of the internet. Today, in India, numerous young, old and unnoticed talents are making their way into the world of entertainment through engaging storylines and more realistic screenplay.
Multiple stories running parallelly and intersecting at a point is now a very common trend in the new and revolutionizing content we are receiving through such OTT platforms. But, let’s go a bit back. When they’re used to be only one Lead Actor/Actress in the movie. Everything happening in that story in that movie was related to that protagonist, making the protagonist inevitably the most important and powerful.
Now, come back to your story, life is not a movie, true, but you are the protagonist, that is also true. Everything in your life is connected to you, and it is you who assign the level of importance to everything, prioritize things, actions, and people. YOU are the protagonist of your life and hence inevitably the most important and powerful person in it. At least in the realm of your thoughts, that means any thought can arise anytime, but none of it is more powerful than the epicentre of all that energy and relevance, which is you. Hence, can be let passed if not liked, without stressing about it.
Do all this can help to eradicate all the probable suffering from our future life, of course not. We can also say that in some movies, the protagonist was the one who suffered the most. Yes, and honestly what is going to happen at the ground level in the future is out of our bounds. What is going to happen will happen, but we have this tendency to imagine scenarios and worry about them.
With all my sincerity I want to say, we can imagine fucking anything, it is our imagination, a realm where we are the master, no one can steal it or hack in it, it is all us. But, once imagined we need to learn to let it pass, we need to learn not to cross the bridge until we reach it.
Said this, let’s come back to Selective Personality Presentation, we know that our subconscious reaction to certain people is not in our hands, we also know that even our thoughts are unpredictable, but certainly not overwhelming. This brings us to the last leg, the information.
Again, the level of deepness in a relationship is often judged by the level of information we have about the other person, even if not the current whereabouts, but the person as a whole. The people we chose to share something personal with us define our fondness and trust in them.
Yes, and the best way to be, is to be honest to the moment, by expressing the honest thoughts that we have in our mind, it may make us appear a fool or a genius, but certainly transparent. In this again, being foolish or genius to someone is a matter of perspective and time, but being transparent is something that can be established everywhere.
Without any doubt, honesty and transparency are the keys to be at ease all the time, but when the situation demands, and past experiences speak for it, we should know that we have different personalities with us, and rest I leave it on your wisdom.
Selective Personality Presentation: a way to stay honest, transparent, and intelligent to the moment or people, through learned & practiced control over the thoughts and limited exposure to personal information, until the right time comes.
~R
An Observer 