Who Am I?

Ice-breakers: enough to strike fear into the most steadfast of individuals. “Tell us a fun fact about yourself,” a middle-aged scholar will croon under an inquisitive guise, crow’s feet meandering around his eyes and a reusable coffee in his hand. We, sixteen grown adults, will avert our nervous gazes in an attempt to conjure up some random titbit about ourselves in t-minus two minutes, the expectation that we do, in fact, know ourselves well enough to do so looming large above our heads. Should we ascertain some obscure nugget about our gap year to Thailand or our double-jointed elbow, it all seems pointless because it makes no odds to anyone else in that room. Not really.

That’s why ice-breakers are lame. To add further fuel to the fire, each one seems to be stylised as a Diane Sawyer interview; we are prodded to go around the circle, everyone turning mechanically, hands interlaced in laps, to watch as the next bold admission leaves some poor soul’s lips. That isn’t to say that I don’t care about the other people in the room but, I’m sure you’ll understand, it equally doesn’t help me empathise or bond with Maria knowing whether she owns an iguana or not. See, when writing essays, an old teacher gave me some advice: imagine that someone is sitting on your shoulder and bleating “so what?” into your ear with every point or paragraph you conclude. That way you’re bound to refine your focus and, with any luck, stay on topic. In an academic sphere, this has been incredibly helpful. In a personal sphere, as you may or may not have noticed, I do enjoy a good old ramble. And what I mean to say is, whatever quirk they’d have me reel out would always be rather inconsequential without context, it would always elicit a “so what?” in my peers’ heads. Pointless. Because this one sentence is designed to summarise who I am and to allow other people to decide whether I am a sharp-witted conversationalist, or a badass ball-breaker, or endearingly eccentric, or just plain mundane and best avoided. That’s hard to do in a standalone snippet. Case in point: my go-to is normally “I have a cat.” So what?

But, sat awash in pretension amid bootleg vinyl and two fashion magazines from three seasons ago, I came to an existential realisation: I wasn’t sure who I was but I was sure who I was all at once. It is still uncertain whether the coffee (black, two sweeteners, give-or-take a litre) helped or hindered the frantic musings that galloped like Red Rum inside this ol' brain. However, I did manage to muster the following parallel: I have never met myself and yet I have to live with myself. In theory, might this mean I know me better than anyone else knows me? It’s a curious question. What about the close mates I have lived with, that I have spewed each inner truth out to over a glass too many? What about my mother and father who have known me and lived with me since I had no idea what it meant to be human, to exist? It is divergent since there is no buyout clause; I’m trapped. It’s permanent and unavoidable.

But I wonder how one knows someone without ever having met them? There is a difference between an authentic perception and a warped perception, too; intellectual and compassionate individuals can sometimes believe themselves to be the world's worst whilst Corey Feldman believes that he, quite literally, is Michael Jackson. There is a disconnect between the eye and the mirror and the camera and the brain. I cannot tell which is on my side. These are questions that can never be answered but I find them intriguing to ruminate on for that reason and, so long as I’m confined to hanging around as my own perpetual roommate, I’d better get to ensuring that this tenure is as bearable as possible.

Join me, won't you?