The Theater of Life
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. --William Shakespeare
We set the scene, and thus define ourselves, with a self-created narrative.
How am I myself? When I write, the self of language is born, emanating from the brain, into the keyboard. What is the nature of this self?
Why, it is the same as any interaction with a world of other beings, a self created entirely as a sort of performance, for whatever audience we may find ourselves encountering.
As this self evolves, we may ask....
Who is the real Stephen Colbert? The Stephen Colbert television audiences came to know for years on the Colbert Report, it turned out was nothing like the personality of the "real" Stephen Colbert, as later revealed on his new late night talk show... But really, how can we know this new personality of Stephen Colbert is any more "real" than his previous character? It only seems so because he behaves less as a comical caricature, and more like what most people would consider a "normal" person, but this does not mean the self he presents to us now is any more "real" than the first. People who know him personaly might be able to attest weather his television self manifests as the same self they see in private interactions, but is even that "private" self real?
Taking it to another degree, everything we do when we interact with the world, whether online or through direct real-world interactions, could be thought of as an artificial character to the extent that we knowingly exercise the power to consciously create who we are in each moment.
When you take it to the next level, this can become a very radical philosophy upon which to live, because recognizing that all we are doing every moment of our lives is playing self-created roles, why not use our power to swap out the old personality, along with the roles it implicitly played, and invent a new one, at will?
It's what we're all doing all the time anyway, but most people don't consciously think about it most of the time, and thus fall under the illusion of being confined to what they perceive others expect of them, or even what they simply expect of themselves, reciting their lines from memory, in that trance we believe to be inevitable reality.
So now I say, seize the moment, choose your role with conscious intent, and be whatever "being" you choose to be, even if it may feel "fake" at first. What begins as fake and forced, eventually becomes as real as every habitual pattern adopted in life. Just do it with conscious awareness, becoming the author of your own lines in the play.