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Two approaches to the question: Who am I?
What we can learn from a one-hundred-year-old quote about identity
“Actually I’m quite different. But I so rarely have time to show it.”
This is an almost a hundred-year-old quote by Ödön von Horváth.
One understanding could be that we all have specific ideas of how we want to be and what values should guide our actions. This reading also sounds to me like: You are not good enough as you are right now. Try harder to become your best self.
A completely different interpretation of this statement makes me smiIe and relax: It is the impossibility of clearly and unambiguously defining our identity. I feel humorously seen through. The well-known discrepancy between aspiration and reality is brought to the point.
Maybe the solution is not to finally nail that one aspired version of ourselves. Maybe the solution is to acknowledge and accept that we consist of many selves — and that we can play with our many selves in a relaxed way.
The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was a master at putting the different facets of his person into work. He wrote, also a hundred years ago,
I created in myself different personalities. I am constantly creating persons. […] I am the living stage on which…
