How different am I to everyone else? That's a question that has puzzled me most of my life, and it's rather a silly one perhaps. Not having studied philosophy, or psychology for that matter, I don't have an armoury of the right vocabulary, or a method of thinking, that could lead me to an intellectually acceptable, conformed answer. But "I think, so I am" as somebody smarter than me in that field once said, so I guess from that perspective I have as much right as anyone, philosophically educated or not, to come up with an answer.
I could also say "I eat, so I am" which would give it a rather more physical sense, and indeed I do have some rather strange eating habits when compared to the majority of people I know. For example, how many people do you know who religiously (and yes, I guess it is a part of my religion) eat half a pound of raw broccoli every day? And not because I'm a health freak - far from it - but just because I like the taste and the crunch. I also have a taste for raw brussels sprouts, half a pound at a time, but I do try to keep that one in check because they wreak havoc on a quiet, relaxed digestive system...
But this particular train of thought is about just that - thought - so I'll leave my strange eating habits out of it for the moment. The point is, I only know what it is like to be me - as I would imagine all of us do. Empathy is one thing, but that's really only a stab in the dark at what someone else is feeling.
For a very long time, I struggled with the idea that I was unique in my attitude to life, or in the way that I thought about life. I quite understood that there is a different set of circumstances for everyone - we all live different things, we all follow different ideas and we see things in subtly different ways. At some points in my nearly fifty-five years, I would have recoiled in disbelief at some of the things that I came to do, some time later. If you try to define yourself and your values, then that can only be at one particular moment in time. You start out with influences from your parents - or whoever was around you when you were very young. From the moment that you start to think for yourself, rather than following the guidance of someone else, you start to move away from those values and influences and become yourself. But your "self" is always changing - at least mine is - and you define yourself in a time-line that moves from one thing to another as you gain experience of life.
When I was young - let's say ten years old - I really had no idea what life was about. The influences around me encouraged me to learn, and to ask questions about what I learned, and depending on the answers to those questions I could form opinions on the world, on myself, on others, and on whoever gave me that particular answer. For me, learning was all about facts. Dates in history; mathematical processes; how to play the piano; how to paint; the capitals and cities of countless countries; how to read a map; why and how electricity worked; how big my lungs were; formulae and equations; how to spell words. I learned them all with an appetite that knew no bounds. I was ten years old in a class with an average age of eleven or twelve, and I fought to be the best, and most of the time I was. And I also learned that I had a very good processor in my head - I got the highest score in an IQ-based test in the whole county of East Sussex, and all the others in my school year were a year older than me. And then, a couple of years later, a change of school, and I was cast back a year with the kids of my own age, and I grew bored with learning the same stuff again, and started to think about other things. I stopped my formal study of music and decided that the music I wanted to play was what was in my head, not what was written in manuscript. I stopped learning and started sensing, feeling instead, and that change had a big effect on me, on my way of thinking, on my methods of reflection, on what I thought of the world.
Suddenly, the world stopped being this wondrous thing where there were facts to learn and to process and to store away - it became a miasma of sounds, and of colours, and of confusion. On reflection, I guess at least a part of that was the angst of being a teenager and realising that I wasn't always going to be a part of a family, I was going to be me, and I didn't know who I was.
Without reference points from other people, I still don't really know who I am. I know things I like doing - I know that I'm quite lazy, that I'm a dreamer who can pass hours doing nothing but reflecting, sifting over things. In some things I am horrendously disorganised, in others I am fastidious, at times I am completely laissé-faire, at others I am an utter control freak who doesn't trust a soul. Maybe I'm schizophrenic, maybe I'm just plain human, only I can know, and most of the time I neither know nor really care. Are we defined by what we do, or by what we think about what we do? But I can't be a schizo, because I am everything at once, I don't have two different phases or anything, it's all there all of the time
From time to time I have tried to change my behaviour in some way or another - as often as not because there was something about the way I acted which didn't gel with someone else - someone with whom I wanted to gel. There's a method to this - it's thought-word-action. You would think that the easiest way to change your behaviour would be to start by thinking in a different way. But it's very difficult to think about something in a different way when you are used to thinking differently. So you start by doing whatever it is differently, and then you incorporate that action into how you talk about it, and finally, if you do it enough, you will think that way too, and you will then act differently to how you did before, but quite naturally.
That's the theory in any case. And from personal experience, I can tell you that it's absolute bollocks. It doesn't work at all. If you want to change, you'll change, but you've got to want to change to make it happen. And if your attitude (like mine most of the time) is "why the hell should I?" then you won't get anywhere with that.
One thing I have no time for is the idea that you "should feel like this". Sometimes I want to stick to convention, sometimes I want to stick two fingers up at it. There are certain values and beliefs that seem to be drilled into our civilisation, and they don't always sit well with me. And once you break with convention, it's difficult to see things the same way again.
I'm a natural introvert. I don't like to talk about things much. Unless, that is, I'm excited by something, and then try and stop me from filling every available pause with words. There's always a conversation going on in my head with myself, and I can say what I like in that interaction without the fear of upsetting anyone or finding disapproval. I'm very open with myself, and mostly closed to anyone else. But... if I think that someone sees things the way I do, I can talk openly because it doesn't feel threatening. And I'm hugely susceptible to the moods of others, they can colour my mood and my outlook enormously at the drop of a hat.
I guess that the bottom line is that I'm scared of something. I don't want to let myself go, for fear of... what? I don't know really. But there's this big wall in front of me that protects me from things, and if I climb over it, I won't be safe any more. I'll stick my head over the parapet from time to time to have a peep, but climb over? No way. Maybe if I do climb over that wall, then after a while on the other side I'll find out what I'm really like, but for the moment, I don't really have the strength (or is that the courage?) to do it.
Life's not that bad on this side in any case.
now looks like this:
