Individuality

[Jacki Cucinotta]

Something that I feel is a very important aspect of life is having knowledge of oneself as an individual. I feel that each person is unique in his or her own way.

On that note, how important is it, in your opinion, to be comfortable with yourself as a unique individual?

 

[gregmcph]

I think understanding yourself is a way to being at peace with yourself.
Getting upset and frustrated with things that are beyond your control... things you should do, that others expect you to do, that you really aren't able and don't want to do... it leads to a miserable life.

To understand yourself. This is is the way I work, and there's not much I can do about it. Once accept that, you can live alot more peacefully.

 

[King_Oni]

It's very important... probably the most important thing in my life. It's not as much that I want to state "look at me, I'm unique", since everyone is, but (forced) change in my personal integrity, beliefs and even looks are things I will defend... if needed, violently.

A statement like this makes therapists believe I might have a small portion of narcissism in me. Since it seems I'm overly obsessed with keeping in touch with myself (and to some extent less with the world). In follow up I should mention that as a kid other therapists told me I needed to get more in touch with myself like that and get a bit more "personality". So perhaps one thing lead to another.

But the entire notion of being comfortable with myself the first and quite often only reason why I actually want to wake up and get out of bed. So this might explain why I feel overly hostile if people want me to change. I tried change and that ended me more depressed for prolonged periods. The times I feel best and somewhat functional is when I'm not being interrupted in being "me". (whatever "being me" exactly means; I wont go into discussion on that, since I feel it deteriorates into a philosophical debate on how much you pick up from the outside and which forms your personality, etc.).

I thought about my behaviour and myself... considering my inability to adapt and give in to what other people want, I'm actually not that difficult to deal with. There's a lot of stuff which just happens to be in line of some social norm, which makes it work. It obviously points out why I can get along with some people and why I can't get along with others at all. There's no real middle ground with me I guess.

I once went over this with a therapist, and they told me that considering my stance and behaviour, it's the perfect profile for someone to end up in jail... it just happens that a lot of things I do (or don't do) still fall within social norms. (an example would be, and I touched on it a while ago on this board; I still believe in paying for things. I believe a somewhat fair trade. If I, with my personality didn't care for that, I'd probably ended up on the wrong path, long ago). I asked this therapist if there was something wrong with this... but he pretty much told me "I'm not going to touch that section with you... not even with a really, really long stick". The problem pretty much was... it's "stable" and functions somewhat properly and as such a "don't fix what ain't broke" for a big part. Of course it could be fixed and perfected, but let's face it... no one is perfect, and I think I might have been lucky to run into therapists that shared this sentiment.

 

[Jacki Cucinotta]

Greg, that's exactly how I feel about being in touch with who we are as a person. I feel that being true to who we are as individuals will benefit us in the long run (i.e., we will feel that we weren't wasting our lives away "living a lie" so to speak). It reminds me of the message that I got from the Tolstoy work The Life and Death of Ivan Illyich (great read by the way - I would really recommend it if philosophy of life and death is a topic of interest to anyone here). Anyone who has read it and remember it distinctly will know what message I am talking about.

Oni, I don't think how you're behaving is at all narcissistic. There's a fine line between respecting yourself as an individual to being totally in love with yourself, or so much so that it seems obnoxious to others, and I don't think you seem like the type of guy who would be considered obnoxious. I hold the same feeling about people telling me to change who I am at times. Sure, there are things I agree I can work on if people recommend me to improve a certain quality about me (i.e., trying to stay calm under stress, trying to keep my fidgeting under control in class, etc.), but if they tell me to change my beliefs and stuff like that, I would not take their advice. If there ever is a change in my beliefs, those come naturally due to a change in heart over something based on my degree of understanding and interpreting a specific topic that might contribute to a belief or set of beliefs I have.

 

[Aalo]

I feel it's incredibly important to know oneself thoroughly in order to be able to hold value on own abilities and so seek pleasurable activities. Also because of there really are 7 billion individuals out there, and not everyone can be established as such in everyday life. Moreover everyone being special equals tome that none is. Every single individual needs to be able to hold their own position because it's rare that anyone else does that for you.

For what comes to Oni's comment about narcissism, that has also been insisted on me a bit. It's not that I'd bring my being up much, but because of my approach to mind body problem as I've trouble realicing (not a typo) how others do form their view of reality: how they see their consciousness and the world outside their bodies. But see, I'm not implying you would not exist at all! It's just that my own sensations are the only thing I can trust, or if I totally can't they're still all I can observe for crating a worldview that's now existing just for myself.