Self

You're defined by the people around you, how your image reflects off of them and back at you, warped by them viewing you, changed by them knowing you, and you by knowing them. It can be a powerful and beautiful thing, something nearly unexplainable how close friends will meld into each other, trading their mannerisms and beliefs, their battles and their dreams. It flows back and forth back and forth, changing a little every time it's viewed and known and reflected.

And what if you take away those people, and you just leave the person alone in their home, reflecting off themselves, watching themselves and distorting their image with their own critical and subjective eye? Do you get something closer to the truth, something unfettered by outside influences, untouched by strange perspectives? Do you get a concentrated pure version of yourself? Or do you get something incomplete, something that is meant to grow and warp and change and melt and reform again but is instead stuck in a rigid echo, reflecting back the same as always? Perhaps you only change it by eating away at it, or adding false accessories in place of real change. Is it left wanting without the information as to how to change?

These bouncing views from our friends and loved ones, from our neighborhood and world society; do they hinder or help? And if completely torn from one or the other, will it leave an incomplete image of the self? Without the personal self one is left with only twisted images of a person from what we can get from others, ever changing and ever wrong, constantly altering the self to fit an ever changing view from a constant stream of eyes, leaving nothing pure or whole to rest on. And without the viewers, without the objective eye of an outside observer and outside influences gently pushing and pulling against our sides, we'd never know to what degree we are capable of changing, how we react to pressure and sloth, how we rise against oppression and fear, and how we buckle to love and pleasure. Without one, the other is all but nonexistent, and with too much of either you are a slave to an unbalanced controller without clarity or knowledge.

Just something that crossed my mind earlier. Thought I'd write it down.