PERSONALITY

Personality

noun

1. the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character.

2. a famous person, especially in entertainment or sports.

Sitting on the couch last night, looking out my windows at everything and nothing, it got deep. The “thinking” started. Crap. We know what that means, right? Introspection. Nothing worse.

Can a person change their personality? Really? I am from the camp of “you are born who you are”. I don’t believe a person can change who they are, fundamentally. I have good friends that believe the opposite. I argue with them until the cows return to the barn…

Carbon units can change behaviors, even if they don’t want to, for survival in a situation. Carbon units can affect many changes to “fit in”. Doesn’t this, unconscious in most cases, constant repression always come out eventually?

It’s common in Corporate America to become something you are not, to meet the ridiculous image, they want to project. This group, (started by old white men I am sure), expect your persona to be exactly what they want. Don’t have any type of individuality. Never deviate in manner. Wonder what cult leader got this going? During my lifetime, this ruled behavior has controlled America’s workforce, politics, religion and well, basically everything.

Some carbon units can do this their entire lives. Some learn the hard way that despite everything you believe in, you must play the game. (<-Moi) Some never learn and go on to happier lives, even if it’s less money. Corporate America for me, was a means to an end. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to scream and run out of a meeting of idiots, like my hair was on fire. Well, after 60+ years, it’s not that I can’t do it. It’s that I don’t want to.

Introspection is scary. The scary revelation of late is that I don’t know who I am. I mean, I REALLY don’t know myself anymore. Decades of brainwashing. Decades of being the “wrong” gender for my areas of career interest. Decades of being told the “personality grooming” was to help me go further. Decades of repression, all in the name of making a buck. I am disgusted with myself.

Oh. My. God. I have developed so many personas, they might cast me in the remake of “Sybil.”

What a discovery. You go through life thinking you know who you are. You go through life with the values you develop from the experiences you have. You go through life with goals or specific needs to care for yourself, family, or friends. Think about how many people you have become. It’s staggering when you break it down like this.

Of course, most people don’t just sit on a couch one day and wonder who they are. Since this latest stroke, I have not bounced back like other times of illness in my life. More and more reflection about my life is happening. Against my will. To me, I have always been the same person, I thought. However, when dissected and thought about in life-searching, serious terms, I am and have been so many different people. Like a chameleon, I flex to meet the environment.

Does that make me phony? Does that make me skitzo? Does that mean I was not representing true actions at the time I was changing skins to adapt to a scenario or environment?

Pretty deep questions for a carbon unit, eh? Hell, if I know.

I will tell you, though, I don’t feel like the me of the past few decades anymore. I don’t know why. Stroke maybe? I think when my brain went askew, my personality went with it. This, of course, flies in the face of my earlier statement. See? Askew.

· The planner of years ahead — Gone

· The neat freak that bordered on psychosis — Gone

· The unyielding addiction to work — Gone

· The need for approval — Gone

· The need to be fearless — Gone

· The ability to tolerate idiots — Gone

· The ability to restrain my personality — Gone

· The ability to do math and park cars — Gone

· The ability to give-a-shit about the inane — Gone

Honestly, not sure how I feel about this. The above list was the culmination of a good portion of things I was good at. I mean really good at doing. It’s how I made my way in the world. It’s how I fed my daughter and kept a roof overhead.

So after freaking myself out right before bed time, I just couldn’t think another thing. I meditated and decided to leave my fate to the Universe.

This is SO, not me. Or is it?