Characters As ...Something

"You are the light of the world" is one of those phrases that pops up very, very often in Christian circles, and usually it means one is supposed to be obvious and beaming the love of God at people. At this point my brain usually gets a popup of a Care Bear squeaking in a high-pitched voice and then shooting rainbows out of its weirdly-decorated belly at people. And huge amounts of sermons, speeches, etc. have been based around this phrase, probably partly because it sounds deep enough to be interesting in this time when cultivating a cultured appearance also means being vaguely philosophical, and partly because it's really pretty obvious if you give it about five minutes or so of thought--in fact the meaning is obvious, it's merely the application that knocks people about a bit.

Personally, I think we're photons. Every single human is a photon, except we're able to self-observe. It's when we're not being observed, by ourselves or by anybody, that we're able to stay constant; and the moment we know somebody's watching, we start changing. Of course I don't mean that we'll never know where in the world we are unless nobody happens to be looking at us and going "why didn't you ask the nice people at the gas station 32 miles ago?". I mean people as in their behaviour, characteristics, however you define the non-physical part of a person--and yes, people have non-physical parts--but let's leave the proof of that to more skilled provers.

And we're very strange photons, because we often change in different ways according to whoever is observing us--I mean to say, of course, that we must first know that someone is observing us, before our behaviour alters. Thus the fondness for people going "you are only who you are in the dark", because when nobody is watching, you are yourself and only yourself, instead of the yourself-that-you-think-the-observer-wants-to-see. And of course, there's a certain feedback that one gets, knowingly or unknowingly, from the observer/s...

It's a very complicated sort of situation, really, but it all boils down to the well-known and simple fact that one's behaviour is always influenced by the people around one, and the people around one are also always modifying their behaviour. Of course then there are multiple corollaries arising from this, i.e. if one knows enough people then one's behaviour is likely to receive multiple and possibly inter-contradictory influences; the strength of this influence is likely to be at least directly proportional to the time one spends with people; the direction this influence takes is strongly influenced by the opinion of the person towards the observers/s; and so on. In esse, humanity is communal and weird, and trying to figure out who one really is, is--well, it's not a waste of time. It's useful to know facts about oneself: things like whether you're a workaholic, or if you have a possibly-fatal allergy to broccoli, facts are useful and easily-found-out and, best of all, easily put to use. It's when people start going off and trying to find things out about their inner selves, however you may define that disgustingly vague term, that strangeness occurs. Because when introspection occurs, one is simultaneously the observer and the object of observation: for any possible aspect, one is able to argue both for or against--"I am a kind person." "No I'm not. I've beaten people up and enjoyed it." "But I helped an old lady across the road." "Only so you could push her into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler." "Accidentally." "On purpose."--things like that, and when one is dealing with something as nebulous as an unquantifiable and vaguely-defined personal trait, one had better not rely on one's own opinion of oneself.

...and all this was brought on by somebody describing me as "cheerful" the other day, followed closely by somebody else describing me as "self-centred"--admittedly the two terms aren't mutually exclusive, but neither also would I usually describe myself using those terms. It means there's quite a discrepancy between how I usually think about myself (not at all, usually, if I can help it) and how others see me (which is, I think, a rather limited sort of view). I don't think anybody will ever truly know themselves fully, and I don't think anybody should try to. After all one is a lousy judge of one's own character, and no person can possibly ever fully and accurately objectively quantify another person; knowing the basics should be quite enough. At least, while on Earth anyway. After death is an entirely different game.