: Re: “are you actually multiple people at once?”
In response to “are you actually multiple people at once?” by muffle.
I’ve thought about this idea a lot. On the one hand, it’s self-evident that you’ll show different parts of yourself to different people, especially in circumstances like work vs. home where there are social rules about what is/isn’t acceptable, but also in order to have a more lush social life: I have friends with whom I don’t discuss politics because it’ll never be a good time, for example; this doesn’t necessarily mean I am less of myself around them, only that those are the terms of that relationship.
On the other, we love to call each people fake bitches when they switch sides and try to flatter and cajole whoever they are with at a given moment. It seems there’s an authentic way and an opportunistic way to be a multifaceted person; we need a way to differentiate those two so that we can avoid being predated by the opportunistic types. That begs the question of how to define authentic, which in turn suggests that there’s an authentic self at the bottom of it after all.
Maybe, in the end, we are allowed a few relationships where we are 100% ourselves. As much as I am multifaceted, I think that my fiancee knows all of the facets of me, even if those facets aren’t necessarily “facing” her; she knows what face I put on for all of the important other people in my life and what that means about my priorities, values, etc. I would even go so far as to suggest that the degree to which one person knows and trusts another is related to the selection of “yous” they allow each other to see.
Asking “Who are you?” is like asking “How far is Innsbruck?"—it depends from where.