6 March 2007

The sum of our past...

Who am I? Am I just a sum of what I've done and seen? If you read my CV will you know me? We think we can see what a person is like by first impressions, and first impressions are important, but not conclusive. I tend to scrub up pretty good, and if I wear a suit you probably won't write me off at that moment. Yet still you will never be able to know me at that moment. We are profiled, prodded, questioned, judged by people who want to know us for whatever reason. All the answers I give will not let those people truly know me. I doubt whether my parents truly know what goes on in my head, and who I am. Leaving the house at 17 I've spent the most important and forming years of my life out of the parental radar. I've lived alone and independently for the past 7 years making my own mistakes, so the question remains if they really know me. Sure, I talk to them often enough, and ask advise on different subjects, and sometimes I even follow their advise, but the choices I make are mine to make and I get to hear often enough that they would have done things differently. So be it, choices made are consequences accepted. And do we ever really let our parents get to know us, do we want to? What if they don't like what they see?

One of the most common things I hear about my personality is that people find it hard to get a feel for who I am. It took my friends, those who stuck it out anyway, 7 years to get to know me. They'll tell you that I don't open up to just anyone, which is true, but if you have the patience and interest then you'll get a fairly good idea of who I am and that you won't regret having to wait. I don't think I'll ever let anyone to truly get to know me, it's just not worth their disappointment. But that doesn't mean that I won't let people try, and I don't let people down if they put in the effort. Can I accept it if people rule me out because they judge me on my past or on first impressions? Not really, but do I have a choice? And have I done that in the past? Definitely, but I know plenty of people that I shouldn't have come close to or bothered with (even with a long stick) based on their past or who they are related to. I shouldn't be friends with my brother based on his family, but we're friends nonetheless.

I am not purely the sum of my past. More importantly, although there are parts of me that may never change and I can't change, there are parts of me that are yet to come. It's up to me to find those out, and up to others to bother to see and find that there is more to me than meets the eye. I'll let you see who I am if you're interested in knowing me for a long time. Try me...

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