Who ARE you?

REALLY should be reading, but I can't get these thoughts out of my head, and so blogging might help me refocus.

Had my mind-fuck class today... "Issues in Religious Thought" aka "The Philosophy of Religion" aka "I'm here to fuck with your mind" haha. But in all seriousness, I love that class! The first non-lit course that I loved. 2.5 hours feels like nothing there... I'm actually kinda sad that next week's class is canceled. So not the point I wanted to get at.

We went into a lot today. Hegel, Feurbach, Nietzche, Sartre, and Keikegaard. All of whom were fascinating. But today, I want to talk about Sartre.

His philosophy centered around the idea that there's no "a priori"... that there's nothing given, nothing fixed... about our lives. There's no greater essence that controls the world, there's no higher purpose that we need to search for, because it is existence, not essence, that matters, and we create our purposes through our actions. In a way, Sartre's view of human nature is sort of like Locke's... we start as a blank slate; there's no fixedness about our natures. However, Sartre would never allow for the idea that who we then become can be attributed to our environment because he believed that we are always in the position to choose. We and we alone choose who we are by the decisions that we ourselves make. Who we are in this and all moments is because of our actions in this and all moments. The "self" is a project that we work on, decision after decision, shaping who we are.
What's even more interesting, however, is that he believed that since nothing is fixed, since there is no reality except in action, we cannot be a brave person, we cannot be a kind person, we cannot be malicious. We can only do brave acts, act kindly upon another, do malicious things... but after every action, we start from scratch. We can be one thing today and another tomorrow.

So there's 2 things about that that have been haunting my head...

We create who we are by the decisions that we make.
-and-
"Who we are" is so fleeting, so impermanent, that the next action that we decide to make can completely alter our "selves".

What does that mean for me?
Sunday, I'm a Christian... and occasionally a football fan
Monday, I'm a hardworking, motivated, willing to do anything I need to, go-getting intern
Tuesday, I'm a college student that couldn't give a shit in 2 of my classes, is a bold and interesting in another, and half-tries in another.
...and the list goes on.
Suddenly the kind person that spent the summer helping 70-year-olds do chair exercises, has turned rebel/hippie/bad-ass... clouded in things that are bad enough for me that I know I'll regret it when I'm 70, trying to do chair exercises. The hard-working intern turns complete slacker, the loving girlfriend turns to the bitchy friend. So who the hell am I?

And what does that mean for you? How do you define yourself?

We can be one thing one day and something completely opposite the next. Just imagine how different this world would be if everyday you thought... what kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to be known in this world? How do I want to see myself?... If every day, every decision that you made were grounded on these thoughts... how many more great things would you do? Who would you spend your time with? How would you act towards them? What shit that you know is bad for you would you finally kick out of your life? How much more would you accomplish... or how much more fun would you have?

Who would you choose to be?

All of these philosophies go so much deeper and have many more implications, but I don't want to mind-fuck you too ;-).
Happy contemplating.