Tuesday, July 27, 2010

In Architecture the Facade, in Anatomy the Heart

How much of who you think you want to be is actually someone that you think you’ll ever be? I’ve been learning a lot about myself recently. One thing I’ve realized is that the person that I want people to see me as isn’t the person that I am. I’ve also realized that the person that I want to be isn’t the person that I think I’ll ever be. I want to be interesting so people will find me curious and want to know about me, all in hopes that they’ll love me. Vanity.  I construct a façade, which is my life, in order for people to think certain things about me that I want them to think.

Let me try to break this façade down for you. I want to be adventurous so I do adventurous things. I not only want to be adventurous but I want to appear to the people I’m around as adventurous. So I do the things that come with that title. I get hammocks, knives, and camping gear, all to fulfill that dream. My latest attempt at adventure has been slack lining. I like slack lining a lot, but I didn’t start doing it because I liked it. I actually hated it to start out. I started it because I thought it looked cool, it looked like something adventurous people did…and so I did. Façade.

I would also acquire as many books as possible. If someone was giving away books, I wanted them. I would go into goodwill and local book stores and look for classics so people would think I was smart. I’d read some of them, roughly 3 to 4%, and the rest would sit like trophies on my bookshelf telling people how much I read and how smart I was. Me ain’t smart. Façade.

I don’t want to blog about things that hurt because I don’t want to give people the benefit of them knowing that they hurt me. Sometimes it’s much easier to have walls up towards people because, when you don’t let them know that they hurt you, then you know you aren’t giving them the satisfaction of knowing that they bested you. Façade.

The list goes on and on. I would want people to think that I was a rebel, so I would talk in class and show them I was more important than the teacher. I would challenge everyone all the time in hopes that people would realize I wasn’t afraid of anything. I talk to anyone and everyone all the time when I’m with people, when I’m alone this isn’t the case. Façade, façade, façade.

So you ask, “Page, what about you isn’t a façade?” Herein lays the rub. Because I am adventurous, I am smart, I am a rebel, I’m not often hurt, I’m not afraid of much, and I love talking to people. But the opposite is true too. How?

With all the things that you do and everyone that you love, you act a certain way. There is the person that you want to be, there is the person that you want people to see, and there is the person that people see. All of these people make up the person you are, all at the same time.

I’m realizing, in all my adventure here in Prague, how much I just want to settle down and have a lovely wife and unruly kids, and how much I miss home, wherever that is. My point isn’t to not do adventurous things, or to not read, or to be afraid of everything, but rather to do them for the right reasons. And the right reasons aren’t selfish.

I’m now 25 and I still do a lot of the things that make up this façade that I put up but the difference now is that I recognize it and say I’m sorry to the people that I’m hurting because of it. I actively try to let people see who I am by loving them the way Christ loved me. I fail often. Who are you really? Why do you act the way you do? What are you afraid of? Why are you afraid of it? Love. War. 


Things to think about
Can you still crack your own back by twisting in your chair?
Changing your habits for a week and seeing what happens.

Things to listen to:

3 comments:

ALINNA said...

i love this and actually read a chapter in a book once that said something similar and made me think a lot.. and this did too. and the crack your back in your chair thing made me laugh.. i used to do that a lot and can't/wouldn't anymore.. but i can crack my toes just by bending them.

Unknown said...

Ha. I know. I crack my back every night. Thanks for the encouragement.

J said...

I'm drawn to the adventure part. I find some truth in that about myself. I have people tell me all the time that my adventures a week are not adventures. It used to bother me. But now I say, it's all in the perspective. Adventures help you discover who you are...

And I like the idea of doing the same thing in every location....I shall try that. I also like to take the same picture 10 times with one thing out of place...it's kinda like a flip book.

Post a Comment