Introducing the Self

I think Diane Ackerman is brilliant. She seems to effortlessly present complex ideas in a manner that's beautifully literary and evocative.

I've been reading An Alchemy of Mind for a little while now, and it's taking me longer than usual to get through because there are so many interesting ideas to mull over.

The chapter I just read really struck me, titled "Introducing the Self." She begins with a quote by Stephen Mitchell:

If "I" give my love to you, what exactly am I giving and who is the "I" making the offering, and who, by the way, are you?

In this way Ackerman perfectly frames the idea of the many selves that make up our identity: "The conscious, preconscious and unconscious conspire to create the notion of self...one never exists in the brain. As solitary as we feel at times, alone and unknowable in the fullness of our desires, every "I" is a "we"...A self is plural."

This concept of self was echoed in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in his examination of what love is: that we share many versions of ourselves with different people in our various interactions throughout our days, but there is one true self that is saved for our significant other.

I've always felt that I can be a different person with different people, depending on the circumstances of the relationship...with some friends, I feel I'm given licence to be more silly, while with others I feel I have to be more serious and responsible. I could never articulate this feeling of having different versions of myself so well as Ackerman:

Much of a self derives from recollected events, their weight and outcome, and the personal iconography they create. Since others figure in those mementos, and the daily acts that impress new memories, other people become integral elements of oneself, an important part of our inner diary and identity. If a loved one dies, one loses portions of self, not just a portion, because the missing person also hosted different selves. One loses the parts of self linked to the different parts of the loved one...

This idea of the many versions of self also helps to articulate what I'm looking for in love: I want someone who will enhance my life...who will inspire the many different versions of me, the good and the bad; the silly, playful me and the serious, responsible me. Is that too much to ask?