“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f*#$ing khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Today, we talk about identity. Something everybody struggles with. As much as I’d like to say men struggle with it more, I’m inclined to believe that women have just as much trouble with it, but in a slightly different way. There’s a lot of pressure out there, tons even, on us from all of these bullshit constructs. A movie like Fight Club or The Matrix comes out, and its supposed to shake stuff up within us dudes. I really don’t know how somebody could watch a movie like that, or read the book, and not have any inclination or realization that something is amiss with the way they are living their lives. And yet, they do nothing about it. They don’t even try. Their identity was FORCED upon them by societal constructs.
Your parents do this, so you must do that. You are of this race and this gender and of this income level, so you cannot be any more than this, and according to our computers…. You are going to be this for the rest of your life. HORSE SHIT. As you go through your teens, you struggle to find yourself. Some people go goth, others like myself turn to video games. But something happens as we age, we never really grow out of that identity, or we jump from identity to identity, not knowing where we fit. As men, we never had a rite of passage, like our ancestors before us. So we age, but we never actually grow up. As women, they’ve never had so much power, and thus are as lost as we are. And we give up on life, we have our identity that people have bestowed on us and we stick through it, just hoping to fit in.
There are glimpses of freedom every now and again. That adrenal rush you got that one time you went skydiving, wearing that santa costume and having women lynch you as they try to sit on your lap (good times, gentlemen), finding that special someone who is supposed to complete you. But still, there is a strong lack of identity among us. That leads to false social interactions, frustrated families, and really pissed off people.
We are confused, and we consume more, hoping that more will satisfy our hunger. But it never does, and yet there’s always something new to grab your money, something you believe will satisfy that hunger. It never does. There really is only ONE solution to all of this madness, and it was figured out thousands of years ago by a really smart Greek dude. “Know thyself.” – Plato
