Who are you to yourself? We all have a self-image, or an idea of who we are from our point of view, with which we wrestle. We can’t ignore the self-image, obviously, because then we wouldn’t be self-conscious. And yes, we are self-conscious. Maybe not all the time, like in class or when we’re asleep, but there are moments where you’re doing something not totally comfortable, say in beginning rock climbing class, when you’re on the dance floor (you know who you are), or just in the few minutes before you doze off to sleep after a long day and night in the library.
In these moments, when we’re self-conscious, the possibility opens up for us to actually change. In some ways, it’s like the moment of recognizing someone who you had met a long time ago but haven’t seen since. You’re not totally unfamiliar with yourself, as if you met a total stranger, but when you’re self-conscious, you aren’t completely familiar or at ease with yourself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be self-conscious; you’d be going along doing your everyday schedule of class, eat, sleep and sex (not self-consciously).
But these moments of self-consciousness give us, uniquely, the ability to manage our identities because we can look down on them as if we weren’t already immersed within them. Unlike animals who are conscious but not self-conscious, human beings: you, me and some professors: can remake ourselves, like slowly chipping away at a block of marble.
If we decide to continue, then on what terms do we evolve? I mean, it’s not a stereotypical high school case of jocks and nerds. It’s Whitman. We’re privileged and therefore special, at least that’s what our parents have told us for a long time. Now it’s the time to prove it, right? It’s the time to display our true selves in its shining glory.
Otherwise, we’d be called boring or awkward. And those are the worst slurs possible in our laissez-faire go-with-the-flow culture: aside from being conservative. But being conservative, in the way Sarah Palin is, is at least is funny. Being boring is an abyss from which there’s no escape. And being awkward can generate laughs but not the kind you want.
To flee from boredom, where do we go? If we’re compelled to be interesting, then what’s compelling us except anxiety? Does it make sense for you to compel yourself to be unique? That’s like saying you’re forcing yourself to be authentic. The very act of force or compulsion is unnatural. It contradicts the very nature of authenticity.
Now, you can be unique but inauthentic. Just go to any length to differentiate and exaggerate yourself by what you wear (no logos), what you say (not politically correct) and what you do (avant-garde and cigarettes?).
The issue is that American culture is commercialized. And the problem is not how much it costs to consume culture, in the movies or in the mall, but how mass culture gets to choose which ways of expressing yourself are relevant. And then mass culture gets to commodify and turn it into branding.
If there is an “Indie” look, then it’s probably being mass produced in Indonesia. Then the brands change year after year. Movie and music tastes evolve. It’s even gotten to the point that some guy from California can make fun of white people on his blog: “Stuff White People Like”: and end up with a bestselling book based off the stuff “white” (or, liberal upper middle class west coast) people like.
The very popularity of that Web site exposes a kind of tension in culture and our self-images. We want to be unique, like that blond woman was in the Apple commercial from the 80’s for the Macintosh, but it seems like the only way to do so is to buy into a specific culture and display ourselves materially.
Perhaps then it comes down to the problem of thinking in terms of boring versus interesting, or well-adjusted versus awkward.
If we think we’re trapped between those two poles of social existence, then we’re always striving to get to the right pole but the ground underneath us keeps slipping backwards. It’s impossible to make yourself not boring, at least not without paying for it with your honesty.
Rather, in moments of self-consciousness, instead of immediately trying to mold yourself, as if you were a block of clay, try to keep dancing. You will naturally and incidentally exhibit whatever it is that makes you you and not anybody else.
