While trying to be the person everyone approved of, I could never know whether I approved of myself too. How does a man find self-respect when a look in the mirror does not give half of the truth. I am an accumulation of faces, personalities and perceptions. Who am I, really? The I is not a constant, not within and not without. A mere blurred portrait that keeps changing colours through time. No one can tell you who you are for the truth must elude the best intentions and it can never receive understanding from the indifferent. Some believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself and others laugh at you when you feel the strongest; and you’re swimming (back and forth) in that space in between, holding your breath, desperate for that inner voice to give you directions. But you don’t know whether to believe that voice and you keep swimming back and forth until your limbs ache. You decide to go with the flow to ease the pain.
The I is not a constant; Arthur Ramsay or Leon S. or Marvin B., the name does not define the essence. Identity moves through time, never satisfied, bending and swirling, discovering and inventing, creating and destructing. For life has shown me that identity is not about being but becoming; identity is a vast puzzle the last piece of which will settle in its final space the day I die.