"This is real, this is me!"
Yes, that is a quote from the lyrics of a song from the first Camp Rock, and as they say, haters gon' hate. :P
It's sung rather well by Demi Lovato, of whom I am a loyal fan. The song talks about Mitchie discovering and defining who she is. She is addressing her self concept--which is what I will attempt to discuss here (not the self concept of the character Mitchie, but the idea of a self concept in general, that is).
In hopes of returning to reading for the subject which gave rise to these musings, I will attempt to keep this post short. (Famous last words.) Today in Psych class, my professor was lecturing on the concept of the self, and its relevance to personality. He made a few comments which struck me; although they are somewhat common sense, their implications can be profound.
The first was that within close personal relationships, our concept of our self is shaped and changed according to the characteristics of the other person in the relationship. In quantifiable terms, when some aspect of the other person is flashed across a screen, an aspect/characteristic of our friend which we do not share, we take a longer amount of time to respond to the word, saying that it does not describe us, then we do to respond to a trait that does not describe us or our friend. In other words--we are slower to differentiate whether the trait is us/not us when it describes someone we are close to. This implies that our concept of our self literally begins to become muddled with our concepts of those we are close to. In a previous post I referred to pieces of me that I feel I have "accrued" from friends, but I never considered that this was a measurable phenomenon. Apparently, it's scientifically proven that our friends impact how we think about ourselves. Go figure. And it stands to reason that the closer the relationship is, the more overlap appears on implicit and explicit measures of self. There are nearly countless sayings expanding on this general idea: "show me your friends and I'll show you your future," is the basic format. According to statistics, the highest predictor that someone will use drugs is that his/her friends use drugs. It's a common occurrence that friends who spend lots of time together not only grow closer to each other but also begin to talk, act, and think like each other. Our friends "rub off" on us. Scientifically speaking, our self concept begins to merge with our concept of our close friends, and over time and as the bond strengthens, we become more and more like our close friends. Fascinating. :)
The second was that a person's idea of self is a complex psychological idea. As my professor commented, every cell in your body today is different now than it was when you were ten. The things that you, specifically you, have lived through have affected the way you view the world and think about yourself. You're biologically and psychologically different, but there is still some sense of unity between your ten-year-old self, and your now self. There is some strong sense that it was you who went through those changes. Our autobiographical memory manifests itself around four years of age, so for most of your life you have had an actively changing concept of yourself.
"Who are you?" can seem like a simple question. But sometimes figuring out what makes you, you, is more complicated than it sounds. Most people freeze, or flounder at best, when asked, "Tell me something about yourself?" Even in ice breakers, we self-consciously weigh which information we should relay to the group, because we realize that it helps for others to pinpoint just who we are.
What really makes someone who he/she is?
At some level, behaviors indicate the type of person someone is. How people act tells us something about who they are. But that's just it...it only tells us something. People are so much more than what they do, or even how they see themselves. I'm not sure I can put into words, at least not succinctly, how I view a person's identity. People are not only what they do. People are not only how they feel. Who we are involves who we have been, who we are, and where we want to be. Our identity includes not only what we do and how we feel, but also what we want to do, plan to do, how we want to feel, and how we want to make others feel. And that list could keep on growing. [Prepare yourself for some spaghetti-brain-ness here.]
My own concept of myself is growing. I think college is a natural time for this, and it isn't a process I'm resisting (on most/good days). I'm asking myself the deep questions, and attempting to answer them in a satisfactory manner. Who am I? Am I who I want to be? Am I where I want to be, and headed where I want to go? If I'm not who I want to be, or not where I want to be, then what steps do I need to take to create change?
Defining, and redefining, myself is both ongoing and exciting. I like that I have a certain amount of control over who I am. I like that I'm not finished becoming me yet. There are some parts of me that will probably never change, including both strengths and weaknesses. There are some parts of me that I think are in the midst of change right now. At least I'm praying. :) And this change is truly a process--it lengthy and while it can involve effort, much of it does not. With God in the picture, more accurately, in my heart, sometimes all it takes to create change in me is to surrender to what He's doing in me. :)
I'll leave this longer-than-anticipated post with a small anecdote from a speaker I heard at Creation a few summers ago. Imagine that God is the Great Carpenter, and you are a piece of wood, destined to become a beautiful wooden bird. The Great Carpenter does not add to the wood, instead He begins with a shapeless block and slowly chips away the parts that aren't the bird. Let God remove the parts that aren't the bird. :)
So what do a Camp Rock song, Psych class lectures, and a wooden bird have in common? The idea of self, the concept of identity. It's complicated, and it changes, and only God can help us become who we are designed to be. The end. :)
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