What Am I? Are we just playing a character?

What Am I? A question that only haunts a few. The rest don’t even think about it. But seriously, though, what is this thing called “I”? Some say there is a fixed soul inside our body with certain qualities that make it us. But that doesn’t answer so many things. It doesn’t answer about our likes, dislikes, and our free will.

For me, there is no question against free will, because I believe we are radically free to do anything at any point in time; just a will away from dancing on roads. It is rather social conditioning that makes us not-dance. But still, the mere fact that we have the potential to do anything at all proves that we are radically free. 

Now, some people say there is no “I” or “You”. Each second is a new moment where you get to define yourself. There is also a belief that “self” is nothing but a bundle of perceptions clubbed together from your birth to the current point. I believe both to be true.

Me: Manoj is just a name– a reference point for this vast bundle of perceptions I saw, experienced, and acted from my conception to this point. All of it is called “Manoj’. Just a word to refer to absolute everything of my existence. And when this name is spelled out, each person has different fragments of perceptions about my existence. Some know my past directly, some know it through me, some only know a few instances of direct conversations with me, and some only know me through third-person interactions. All of them have a certain bundle of perception, let’s call them ‘scenes’ of me being in their field of view. And these couple of scenes together are what form ‘me’ in others’ eyes.

But that’s not the end of it. They also have feelings, thoughts, and emotions as reactions to my presence in these scenes. Were these happy scenes? Was the outcome of those scenes something positive to them, or was it negative, but me being in that scene didn’t contribute to the overall negativeness? It goes entirely subjective from here. 

But that’s upto someone else’s version of ‘us’. But when we say what am “I”? We’re mostly talking about our own perception of ourselves as a one whole being. “What is my character?”
“What is my personality?” “Who am I?”. Similarly to the third-person perspective of our image in other people’s heads, we have an image of ourselves, too. And mostly it is consistent. But we, as humans, looking for patterns, linearity, and predictability, tend to see our entire being in a consistent narrative– a character. When we’re asked to pick an ice cream, we’d think, “What would my character pick?”. Sure, maybe we’re not doing it that consciously, but this is what happens on a subconscious level. We are trying to play the consistent character of ourselves.

So when we ask “Who am I?”, it’s mostly difficult to answer because what “I”, are we referring to? In each scene of ourselves in our heads, we’re not really the same person. We’re a different person with a certain level of predictability and consistency and not always 100%. Sometimes we’d behave like a ‘different person’, which just means we have behaved differently from our own predictability or consistent image of ourselves. 

Some people like to have predictability and consistency. Some people don’t want to be defined as one whole being. But at the end of the day, the “I’, is just anything. If you are confused, thinking “This is not me”, then it’s time to change you. Do different. Nothing is stopping you. There is no “you have changed” or “you are not being yourself”. Nobody is technically being themselves; we’re all in the illusion of being ourselves, while each individual scene gives us the potential to act differently. At any given point, you have agency to do multiple things. Your choice defines who you are. Every second you live, you actively choose to be you. The analytical understanding of all the scenes of yourself put together into one consistent personality. You are choosing to play it. And you are free to break the character.