You are who you think you are, yes. But only to yourself.

We all have our ideal selves, the us we are in our heads. The us we are inside the mirror. The us that we work so tirelessly to become, the you that you see when you look in the mirror. But the question becomes, are you able to see the difference between who that is, and who you are? Are you delusional enough to believe that you are the man in the mirror? You see, they were not being literal when they said that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. That’s the creepy thing about mirrors for me, what you see is not exactly what the next person will see, you will see a beat down you and someone could see an achieved you, thus the beholder. The thing however is to understand why, to understand deeply that what you see is not what everyone sees, that your envisionment of yourself is not everyone’s reality of you. I have seen enough posts about telling people they are who they think they are, and I agree but the half part is, that you are only who you think you are to yourself. The forced ideology of who you think you are to others is where the line between building esteem(which is what the quote intended) and being uncomfortably yourself is crossed. People need space to know you, they need to understand and have impressions of you independently. The more you try to influence this process, the more doubtful they become of impressions formed, the more difficult it is for them to know you and the less trust they can issue. And it is entirely okay for people to be wrong about their impressions of you. You can only be the muse, not the painter and certainly not the audience.

So, the understanding of who you are; People have these misguided forms of thinking where life shapes you, where you are fated to become a certain way, and where the people around you influence how you turn out. And I am not entirely disagreeing with that, impressionability does exist, I am just saying that they can only influence how you turn out, they are not responsible for it. Humans have a fear of consequence, they would rather blame anyone, literally anyone and anything than face the consequences of their own deeds, and thus when a child turns out bad, the parents are blamed and when you fall out of love, s/he’s the reason why. I am not saying that it is always wrong, I am just saying that from when a child gains cognitive ability, they become more impressionable and thus more at fault for paths they choose in life, to which someone said, “while the way a child turns out is a responsibility burdened on the parent, a child only turns out as good as they are willing to be brought up” and I agree. You see, all this outward reflection only helps you lose awareness and I get the thrill in that but for this particular matter is not thrilling, it is careless. People can influence how you think and how you behave but living in a neo society means that you can understand, that it is not yet brainwashing. This heavily means that you are responsible for adopting the thought, that you are at fault for whichever decision you pick. You need to understand that you are responsible for yourself, for who you become, and for how you turn out. And this could be good news because it only means that you are able to become the you that you are in your head. You just need to see the difference between the two of you and close that gap, but yes, easier said than done.