The Myth of Personality
How can we answer the question: ‘who are you/am I?’. Is it our nationality? Or religion? Or race? Is it the contents of our personalities or genetic characteristics passed on to us from our parents? Is who we are concrete and set in stone, or, being the total of our memories and experiences, does it change the further along we go in life?
Most of us are guided by the belief that deep within us lies an ‘essential self’, that is the truest version of who we are, beyond all negative and corrupting influences of society. This idea is very important to how we perceive and interpret our behavior and that of people around us. It enables us to draw a clear line between those we think are ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people. But is this the way things are or just the way they seem?
Whether one calls it the ‘self’, or the ‘soul’, or just personality, we all more or less believe that there’s a definite set of characteristics that constitute the ‘essence’ of who we are. When we feel we’ve strayed from this — when our behavior starts to not reflect our perception of ourselves, we say that we need to ‘try to find ourselves’ or we go ‘soul-searching’ because we believe that who we are is already out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered.
We hardly ever think about how our preferences and values change over time. We take it for granted that, while the tiniest details may change, the essence of who we are doesn’t. We think the same of the people around us, too. The older we get, however, we’re better able to look back on how we’ve grown and, if we look closely, we can see patterns begin to emerge of major shifts. Time changes us — it’s often subtle and we have to pay close attention to see it, but none of us ever stay the same.
The belief in an essential self can be seen most clearly in our language — we say things like ‘I wasn’t feeling like myself’, or ‘that was so unlike you’ when our or other people’s behavior doesn’t fall in line with our expectations. But, is there any reason to believe that some of our decisions are truly ours while others are nothing more than deviations from our norm? How can we even know which is which?
Certainly, there are times when we behave in ways that don’t ‘agree with us’, and we feel it deep inside ourselves that we have, in some sense, betrayed ourselves. This only serves to feed this illusion that there is some inner self that we are constantly trying not to disappoint, one that knows what actions ‘agree’ with us and which ones don’t and passes judgment when we don’t act right.
I think many of us believe that, if we can only insulate ourselves from the world and its influence, then we can get in touch with our ‘true and essential’ selves. But who is this true and essential self? Does this ‘self’ that we try to find have any defining characteristics and personality traits of its own? Is it kind or cruel? Vengeful or forgiving? Where does it get these characteristics if not from the world around us, and does everyone else have the same characteristics? This line of thought invariably leads down a path that asks questions about the most fundamental thing that is human nature.
Human nature and the ‘essential self’ go hand in hand because both ideas imply that, individually and/or collectively, there are certain personality traits that we all share. This then means that, though our behavior may vary depending on the situation, who we are, at the core, is more or less constant. It paints a picture of humans as static and unchanging. More importantly, however, is that we static and unchanging humans have no power to control or create this essential self, but only to discover it, hence the term soul-searching, not soul-creation. Such notions come with consequences, unfortunately — if who we are in the most fundamental sense is someone/something else’s creation, then how can we be held responsible for anything that we do?
It must be one of the biggest myths of our age to believe that getting to know ourselves is a once-off thing. In reality, it is a process that doesn’t stop until our heart does. Our belief in a static personality stems from it being so much easier to believe in the unchanging nature of things (and people) than it is to accept how transient they are.
I believe that the aptest description of who or what we are can be found in the term ‘human being’. Society tells us that we are constant and unchanging — that is why schools try to predict who will be successful from a very young age or we struggle with accepting ex-convicts back into society even when they are ready to turn their lives around. It is why the words ‘you’ve changed’ are more often spoken in a negative context than in a positive one. The truth, however, is that we are all constantly changing and evolving — only dead things don’t grow. We live and we learn, and maybe we improve, but maybe sometimes we decline, too.
Personality may not exist in the way that we think it should, but something similar to it does. We can get in touch with it by listening to our inner voice. It may not have access to some objective truth that we don’t consciously know, but this inner voice grows as we do, and though its song changes, it always wants what’s best for us. Our ‘true’ self does not exist independently of the external world, but alongside it, learning from it and shaping our choices and values. That we are not who we are, but who we make ourselves is, to me, a more powerful revelation.
As Heraclitus once said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
