Persona

Besides being the name of best video game franchise ever, the persona, for Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—”a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.”

This will be a very a very personal post, in the one I will attempt in the form of a list, to deconstruct my mind and uncover what lies beyond the surface to maybe discover who I really am. With the help of Mr. Carl Jung and information from some INTP forums, I have compiled a list of personal traits, habits and thought processes that I (maybe mistakenly) associate and identify myself with, so that then, maybe, I can understand why I wear those masks and what hides behind them. I need to learn what does it mean to be me, why am I me and what makes me me.

• I can be best friends with someone for over a decade and still not feel any kind of emotional connection because I shun emotions and feelings.
• I know a lot about many things and have a wide range of interests, that makes people connect with me in many ways but I very rarely connect with them because I understand not all people need the same things, some need to connect with others and some don’t. I don’t. Even though others try hard and convince me that I do because we are all the same, I still can’t be convinced and I believe the reason they say that is to avoid having to think about life deeply because that would imply admitting that they will die and cease to exist together with all those emotional connections they made.
• I can’t be bothered to proofread before submitting something because I don’t care about the details as long as I am able to communicate the main point. I also never read the instructions because I think we learn by doing, not by reading how to do.
• I have hundreds of websites bookmarked to read later and I know I will never get down to it because something new is always more interesting and every time I get a new computer I create new bookmarks that are then lost in space whenever I lose access to that computer or phone, and so it has been more than 14 years of it, bookmarking things and then losing access to them.
• Most of the ideas I have, never get to see the light of day because I’m too scared of failure and the projects I do start are either abandoned out of boredom when I manage to solve the tricky part or find something more interesting, or they are self-sabotaged because I am not only afraid of failure, but also of succeeding, like a dog chasing a car, he just wants to chase it but he doesn’t know what would he do if he got to catch it.
• I like something in theory but I’m disappointed by the reality of it. Because everything sounds better in my head. I want to be with you because I like the idea of being with you, but I don’t really want to be with you because that would involve an emotional commitment as well as monetary and time-wise that I can’t afford to undertake.
• I have a list of things I have to do every day and they never get done, and things keep getting added up to it until there’s no more space because the day has very few hours, and I have a list of books to read that will never  be read because they are too long and life is too short.
• I am a theorist and I know I could solve all the problems in the world, but just in theory. Because of my lifestyle, I got the chance of living and traveling in many countries and got to see how different countries solved different social, economic and environmental issues, so it would take me only a few weeks to compile a manual called “How to solve all the problems in the world” and publish it and promote it myself and I have actually already planned the whole book in my head, it will have 100 chapters because 100 is a neat round number, with chapter 1 being called for example ‘transportation’ and documenting which countries have good transportation systems, and how they do it and which ones have a terrible one and why. Chapter 2 could be called ‘housing’, 3 ‘education’, 4 ‘energy’, 5 ‘health’ and so on. But I can’t be bothered doing that because the thought of writing the book, in theory, is more appealing than the practice of writing it, so why should I do it if I can already imagine what it would be like? And also everything sounds better in my head, but when I try to put something into words disaster strikes, and another reason I don’t write it is because I somehow think things are good enough because there are no rivers of blood flowing outside my house then things are not too bad yet. And then there’s the fact that I think faster than I type, so by the time I finish a paragraph I already forgot about what the next one was supposed to be about and there is also the fact that I have a lot of confidence and no confidence at all, all at the same time, so that my confidence and lack of confidence conflict while writing something, just like they do right now.
• Small talk not only bores me but it’s actually insulting. For me it means people don’t value my time, because anyone who knows me, knows I have a full-time job as a teacher, and I’m also writing and editing every day, and I’m still running 100 instagram accounts, and doing SEO and still need to find time to meditate and read and exercise and look after my dog and there’s always a million things on my to-do list so anyone who has the need to make small talk they are actually taking away some of the precious time I have so little of, and forcing me to spend it in something I don’t enjoy and don’t get any benefit from, which is making small talk.

 

And now that the list is finished, here’s a fact: “We tend to exaggerate our good qualities and project who we want to be rather than who we are onto our answers” and now there’s another fact: “I tend to question everything and I don’t even believe a thought I think, because I suspect myself of being secretly biased towards something”. So what should I do with the above information? Take it at face value or keep digging and digging trying to come closer to the truth only to realize later that there’s no truth. I think therefore I am, and I question my thoughts because I think and I don’t trust them, because I know how fragile and malleable human minds are, including mine.

And the next point is that I believe that the reason I question myself is to feel special, to feel different, because I believe most people don’t really stop to question their thoughts or actions, they just wake up and go about their habits every day until they die. So in that sense, if I question it means I’m different, and that would be ok if I were to stop there instead of questioning the reason why I question myself. And if that wasn’t enough, I can’t avoid questioning the reason why I question questioning myself, only to find that it wasn’t so that I could feel special and different but it was so that I could try to find a meaning to it all. To my thoughts, to my life, to the universe, thinking that maybe if I keep digging deeper and deeper I will find the answers I’m looking for. Except that there are no answers, not for me and not for anyone. I have created the questions and then got puzzled because there were no answers to the questions I had invented, which were not real in the first place, because what we call reality is probably an illusion, and if it isn’t then at least my thoughts and ideas are most probably an illusion and in the remote case they aren’t they are still meaningless. The fact that they are real doesn’t guarantee they have any meaning or value, they are just thoughts and ideas, theories and conjectures, that creep in uninvited.

To go a bit deeper, and now assuming that my thoughts are somehow real, I must go on and admit that whatever I think, do and say is a consequence of what we call causality and conditioning. We are all conditioned by our environment, by our thoughts, by our upbringing, by our level of awareness, by our education, by our experiences, by the way in that we see the world, by the way we see ourselves and by some other variables. And once I start to understand how conditioning really works, I can see past this “everything’s either an illusion or meaningless” mentality and I can understand who I really am and why I am trying to understand myself. Only to realize there never was such a thing as ‘myself’ to begin with. And there never was an answer to who I am or why am I the way I am, because there never was an ‘I’ to begin with.

It’s the idea of the non-self. There is nothing inside us besides those things that are a product of causes and conditions. And that’s as far as I’m willing to go, today at least.

 

 

 

 

 

To get to know myself better

1. What are my strengths? Imaginative, resourceful, smart.
2. What are my short-term goals? Build sources of passive income.
3. Long-term goals? Find peace of mind.
4. Who matters most to me? Bong Gu.
5. What do I like to do for fun? Writing fantasy stories.
6. What new activities am I interested in or willing to try? Skydiving.
7. What am I worried about? Wasting my time.
8. If I could have one wish, it would be: To have more time, or not being aware that my time to live is limited. 
9. Where do I feel safest? On the internet.
10. What is my proudest accomplishment? Traveling on foot with my dog.
11. What is my biggest failure? I did my best.
12. Am I a night owl or an early bird? I wake up early and go to bed early.
13. What do I like about my job? What do I dislike? I am an unemployed person.
14. What does my inner critic tell me? That whatever I do it will always be second best to what I could have done.
15. What do I do to show myself self-compassion and self-care? I understand that even if I made some mistakes, I was doing the best I could based on the resources, the circumstances and the information that was available to me at the time.
16. Am I an introvert or an extrovert? Am I energized being around others or being by myself? Need to be alone to recharge.
17. What am I passionate about? Finding answers and solutions to problems.
18. What is my happiest memory? I was floating in the ocean on the coast of Kerala, India. The sky above me was clear and there was nothing or no one else in the water or the beach. Time appeared to freeze as I found myself alone in the universe.
19. What do my dreams tell me? Nothing, they’re just dreams.
20. What is my favorite book? 1Q84
21. Band? The brilliant green.
22. Food? Falafel.
23. Color? Pink
24. Animal? Ants.
25. What am I grateful for? My mind and freedom.
26. When I’m feeling down I like to: Think everything will pass, even this.
27. I know I’m stressed when I: Start walking in circles around the room in an attempt to rationalize the situation and understand it so that I can calm myself down.
28. What activity in your life lights you up with joy? Playing with dog
29. If a relationship or job makes you unhappy, do you choose to stay or leave? I don’t choose to leave, because staying was never an option.
30. How does your being here in the universe change humanity for the better? It doesn’t really.
31. How comfortable are you with your own mortality? Pretty uncomfortable.
32. What is your highest core value? Freedom.
33. To your best knowledge, how do other people perceive you? Like someone whose train has long gone and there’s no way to return. 
34. How would you like others to perceive you? Like someone who is kind and lives a simple life.
35. Who is your greatest role model? Carl Sagan.
36. Who is a person that you don’t like yet you spend time with? I live a solitary life.
37. What is something that is true for you no matter what? I will die.
38. How do you feel about your parents? They are ok.
39. How is your relationship with money? Tumultuous.
40. How do you feel about growing old someday? Scared. 
41. What role has formal education played in your life and how do you feel about it? No role, I don’t really think about it.
42. Do you believe your destiny is pre-determined or in your hands to shape however you wish? In my hands.
43. What do you believe is the meaning of your life? There is no meaning.

Hey there buddy 3

 

Be Skeptical. If you go to a job interview and the interviewer keeps reminding you how good this job is, then is not a good job.

What if I miss getting a really good job because the interviewer was just being honest?

You won’t, if your government constantly reminds you how free you are that means you are not free, because in a true free society no one needs to tell you that you are free, if China was a free country they would just call themselves China, instead of people’s republic of China, and North Korea would be called North Korea instead of democratic people’s republic of North korea, Congo would be just congo instead of democratic republic of the congo and..

ok, I got it.

If your parents remind you often how lucky you are because of so and so, it means you are not lucky and they just want to make you feel guilty so you will bend to their will.
If a girl says you don’t need to use a condom that means you do need to use a condom because…

Got it.

If something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. Most scams prey on people’s greed and their desire to get something for nothing.

Why can’t I just trust everyone and take their words for it, I don’t want to worry about people cheating on me, being an adult sucks.

I know, it’s like being dead but you’re still here.

I wouldn’t ever trust the governments anyway.

There will be some revolutions in the future, Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Thailand,  etc, but they usually just want to patch up the system, instead of fixing it or building one that works for everyone, so it’s not worth joining, there was one in Iceland that got good results though, but the others were all quite violent and we shall never engage in any kind of violent activities, no matter what, there is no excuse for violence, ever.
The reason there are wars is that people keep going to wars. 

I see. So how to handle a violent situation?

Best we can do is stand there and make sarcastic comments.

Got it. But how can I get a girl?

I thought we covered that already, you need to get stronger, that will make you confident.

But I need more advice, something that doesn’t take years to master, something I can use tomorrow.

Tomorrow at the Pokemon tournament?  

Yes.

…

…

Ok, how about the 3 seconds rule? Or was it 5 seconds?

You mean where we eat what we just dropped?

Yes, but in this case is girls instead of food. After making eye contact you approach within a few seconds to avoid awkwardness or coming up as creepy.
Remember girls want someone strong, independent, spontaneous and confident, someone, who doesn’t doubt himself and that is the image you project when you approach within the first few seconds of making eye contact. Otherwise, they’ll be able to smell your fear.

Got it, what else?

They also want someone who doesn’t need them. Someone who doesn’t want them, so if you ignore them and don’t look so desperate they will just come to you. 
There’s a reason why they usually come when you already have a girlfriend, is because they can feel, sense, or to put it more accurately, perceive that you don’t need them. And that’s what makes you attractive in their eyes.
I know it doesn’t make much sense but it doesn’t have to, that’s girl’s logic and the sooner you understand it the better off you will be and the less pain you’ll go through, you don’t need to understand it, you need to accept it, is that clear?

Yes, what else?

Ok, everything I said about girls so far works for 90% of them the other 10% are the ones worth keeping, The ones who don’t need to be seduced or lured into a sense of security because they don’t care that you don’t know what to say. They are the ones who will love you for who you are and how you are, no matter what, the ones who will follow you everywhere you go and will always want to be with you and understand you. 
The ones who will appreciate you fully and feel lucky to be with you.
The ones who will not cheat on you but if they do they wouldn’t say something like ‘I was drunk’ or ‘it just happened’ they will tell you the truth instead, which probably is that they were just curious, lonely, horny or they just wanted to try something new, which is somehow understandable.

Are those valid excuses to cheat on someone betray their trust or destroying your relationship? 

Of course, they are not, but they are more honest than ‘it just happened’, they can bring some kind of closure, and by being honest they can open the door to friendship or at least a level of mutual understanding.

I understand, what else?


Now we need to talk about vegans, I know you are vegan now, but you’re making a mistake. 
I’ve been vegan for like 10 years and I regret the mistakes I’ve made, like not knowing how many grams of protein, carbs, and fats I should take every day, not knowing how many calories are in the food I eat, nor how much I require depending on my level of physical activity.
I know because of our traveling lifestyle is often impossible to boil the broccoli we need to eat after exercise, afford and carry all the nuts, make shakes with fruits and nuts and soy milk, being vegan takes time, effort, planning, and dedication at least during the first few years and you haven’t put much into it. 
A balanced diet is all about numbers, no more and no less, if you get that wrong nothing else matters, there are plenty of websites that will tell you how many calories the food you eat has, and after a few years you won’t need to worry about numbers anymore, you will just know it. 
Free range eggs are ok also, as long as you are sure where they come from there should be nothing wrong with eating them. There are plenty of soy protein powder shakes to drink after your last rep but I’d rather you boil the broccoli, cauliflower, eggs and beans, and nuts, heaps of nuts.

Ok, what else?

Now comes the hard part, talking to people about veganism. there are some kinds of people who just want to bash or make fun of vegans, just because they are different or think differently than them, so they deserve no respect, just walk away from them, don’t engage.
Whether you like them or not, vegans are people who have decided to take measures and alter their daily lives to lessen the impact on the environment and the suffering of other species and that is something that deserves respect, from any point of view.
The reason why most people hate vegans is because they come across as pretentious, obnoxious, extremists and arrogant. 
The empathy they show towards the animals is not showed towards other humans, and they will even shun most vegetarians and even other fellow vegans because they eat honey or because they agree with them 99% instead of 100%.
They don’t understand our point number 1, about remembering the monkeys, most people eat meat because that’s just the way things are and the way they have always been if they had been raised in an environment where people don’t eat meat they wouldn’t be eaten meat now.
But most vegans will see them as criminals for not changing or even acknowledging the impact their diets have on the environment and every animal and human’s lives. 
To sum it up, avoid other vegans, and avoid people who don’t respect vegans.

So just avoid everyone?

Yes, because none of them are willing to view or accept other people’s views.
All those specially produced vegan products also take a huge toll on the environment, global warming, water pollution, co2 emissions, extinction, and loss of natural habitat of many species. There is one solution is called freeganism, is when you try to use and eat things that have been discarded by society, which is quite easy in developed countries but somehow troublesome in underdeveloped countries, It’s what we will be trying to aim for.

Ok, I will ignore them, what else.

Don’t need to ignore, but learn how to dodge their bullets, if a vegan or a non-vegan asks you why don’t you eat meat just say you don’t like it. 

Same as with the religions?

Yes, if somebody asks you if you believe in god, just say you are not sure. Because if they were mature enough to accept your real answer they wouldn’t be asking that question in the first place. 
If you say you don’t believe in god they will ask you very aggressively ‘so what do you believe in?’ because in their minds we all have to believe in something and it has to be something that has been pre-scripted by someone else and that other people believe in as well.
You can’t just go around life happily smelling the flowers and not believing in anything, that would be a crime in their minds.
And the same goes for people who ask you ‘what do you do?’ People who ask you that question is because they will only accept an answer they have heard before and they can relate to, something that will make them feel safe with themselves and grant them the knowledge that you are also a productive member of society that contributes to it as much as they do. But they know nothing about the real world or alternative ways of living, they just want validation, reassurance and you’re gonna try to give it to them.
‘What do you do?’ is not the same as asking ‘what’s your job?’ 
People who ask the first question they assume there is only one thing a person can do during their whole lives, people who ask the second one can understand some people often change jobs or do different things or they may unemployed, underemployed or volunteering their time, or building a robot, or on a long life holiday, they may be fed up with the system and searching for something else, they may be writing a novel or playing videogames the whole day but those are things they can’t understand because they can’t relate to them.
So you can be honest with people who ask you ‘what’s your job?’. People who ask you ‘what do you do?’ must be dealt in the same way as the vegans, vegan haters, and religious people. The truth is too much for them to handle so just lie to them, tell them what they want to hear, it doesn’t matter, you could be a rock star for all they know.


1. Remember the monkeys.  2. There are 200 other countries.  3 Train your Nose  4. Tell family you love them.  5. Talk to yourself 6. Get stronger. 7. Do what’s right.  8. Sign up to Couchsurfing. 9. Keep playing video games 10. Penis is ok. 11. Make the most of my life. 12. Avoid religions. 13. Avoid talking about diets. What else?

give me two years

What? Ok