Two possible approaches to the question: Who am I?
copyright: Dorothée King
What we can learn from a one-hundred-year-old quote from a German-writing Austrian-Hungarian-born playwright and novelist
"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 different actors appear, who perform different plays.”
Both Horváth and Pessoa know the experience of exile. Pessoa grew up as a child and adolescent in South Africa and later returned to Lisbon. With his Jewish background Ödön von Horváth had to leave Nazi Austria. He emigrated to Paris.
No matter how and where we live today. We all know the feelings to not be in the right place. We know the constant challenge of how to locate ourselves in different systems. The acid test between different identities never completely disappears.
I have decided to accept it as an opportunity. It is not only a burden, but also a pleasure, a pleasure of new creation. Yes, I can reinvent myself every day. Yes, it is okay to show different facets of different personalities.
Enjoy life. Feel liberated in the Now. Thank you for reading.
Also published on medium: https://dorotheeking.medium.com/two-possible-approaches-to-the-question-who-am-i-cf767030bf8f