I continue to surprise myself

Sometimes when I stumble me doing something that I never imagined to do, I am quite perplexed. Is it me? Can I do something like that? Well, I wonder when this element of surprise will cease confronting me. Every time I think I know that I will never do that, I prove myself wrong. This state has two sides to it: One, I discover myself each time I stumble upon something new and Two, I am proved wrong in my judgment of ME.

This element of surprise, er, sometimes shock, confuses me. Most of the times the discoveries aren't very pleasant. The very same qualities I would have detested in someone else surfaces in me and my thoughts immediately run to that person. I feel sorry for having judged X on an earlier occasion. Now this puts me into another dilemma. The dilemma of acceptance. If I find a flaw in me that I resented in another, would that mean I have to accept the other person now? But that trait in X was different, I try to justify. I wonder.

Maybe Susan Sontag was right when she said: "The Self is a Project -- Something to be Built." But for how long should I work?

I know all of you face this. How do you resolve this issue?

And then the string of beads snapped

For a long time now, say four years I have been wearing a string of beads. Before that I was wearing a similar string of beads for about five years. I quite liked wearing that string of beads which resembled a string of prayer beads used by the Buddhist monks. Since that fascination, I have been replacing the beads everytime it snapped. The beads had become synonymous with my personality.

Not many liked wearing those beads and therefore that was a value-addition to that string of beads. AND ToDaY the string of beads which was with me for long, snapped and the beads fell down Slloowly . . . one by one . . . rolling . . . frolicking on the folds of my clothes. For a long time I had worn those beads and as time passed by the beads started wearing me. When people commented that those beads looked good on me and gave a mystical quality to me, I was elated. The casual liking to wearing beads slowly started acquiring a different meaning. It became an extension of me. I started associating my image with the beads. Since not many wore it, it became my signature. The few days I would remove it, atleast one person would ask me about the 'notorious' beads of mine.

I had allowed the beads to define me a certain way. Or rather I imagined the beads on me to define me. And today when the beads snapped, I felt an identity melting and that I could not do anything about it. I started thinking how something as insignificant as a string of beads could overpower me into defining my self. Not long ago, I had written a post on emotionally attaching oneself to something. How true!

The beads that wore me had finally snapped this evening. I think I will not replace it this time.

Picture courtesy: Internet

The conflict between the real self and the projection of the self

Several times when I react to a particular situation, I think: "Thats not ME." These "Thats not me" situations seem to be niggling me at least once a day. I would like to use this post as a 'digging deeper' process. Now why does this happen? I guess there is a real me - personality, characteristics, etc and I respond/react in such a way that my self usually is but then I imagine myself to be something else and take that image to be the real one unless certain situations jolt me out of that self-realisation.

Sometimes the projection of myself in my mind is that of a calm and composed person. Well. Then a circumstance occurs where I am required to be calm instead of becoming restless. Me, the being responds absolutely in a different manner. I rant and rave and after the first round think: "Wait, was that me? But I am supposed to be calm and collected." There bursts the bubble of the 'calm and composed me.' Thats not all. This happens many times. I analyse myself and find many dualisms that exist within me. Dualisms are quite different from projections of the self but then they are conflicts nevertheless.

I guess its time that  I cease to  have a projection of me and accept the real me. But will that happen? I know its a process. That will save a lot of trouble for my being which never seems to be satiated with what it is.

Along similar lines:
Arriving at a definition of 'Normal'
Dualisms suffocate me