Stupid Expressions

"And indeed there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." -T. S. Eliot (this might not be quite accurate as I'm too lazy to look up the quote)

I was recently reading Paul's blog wherein he wrote a brief article about how the expression "I'll sleep when I'm dead" is stupid." While I agree with his assessment of the idiocy of that statement, I feel as though I should throw my own opinion in as far as stupid expressions are concerned. Perhaps I have a skewed view on this one, and it's really not an expression now that I'm thinking about it, but god dammit it pisses me off and it is something that Coca-cola and every advertising company has been using to appeal to the American spirit and it is "Be Yourself." That sounds nice right? Be Yourself. Seriously though, not only is that vague and unsatisfying when you stop to think about it, but also it's probably utter crap.

1.) Let's start from the shallow and work our way in. Perhaps we should consider an average Joe who is nice on the outside but ultimately a product of evolution which means he's savage, brutish, horny and occasionally empathetic, kind and horny. Should he behave like his inner chimpanzee desires too? Human beings pretend to be nice, but, and I know this is a really stupid and obvious thing to say, we're viceful and usually evil creatures. Those creatures lie at the very heart of the human "self."

2.) Well really the most important point in this rant is that we don't stay consistent as a "self" even around our closest friends. In any relationship the commonalities between two people define their relationship. When I'm around friends from St. John's I can make a series of complicated references to various philosophical ideas and assume that the person understands the enormous amount of context which follows in each reference. When I'm around other friends I can make those references to TV shows, or movies or whatever we might have in common. My point is that in each relationship, after reaching a level of comfort, there is a personality agreement which is reached between people. Long term relationships require that both involved parties are able to express a certain part of their "self" around the other, and that both parties appreciate and enjoy being that particular version of self. Many relationships, I think, end because after several months with another person you realize that perhaps you don't like the "self" or person the other makes you be.

3.) The worst problem with being "yourself" is that it's confining. All of the sudden you have demarcated aspects of personality or behavior that are not "you." Seriously, and I mean this, Fuuuck that. I know that even for myself there will be a time when I am more tied down by various people such as a spouse or children, and that this hinders, to some extent, the ability to rapidly change personalities. While it remains possible though, I would like to live through a million different personality traits. I want to be a jerk and a sweetheart, a tool and a charmer, a player and a husband. Each of these adjectives lives somewhere deeply in my soul. Sometimes I mix them in different ways, and sometimes they come out the same. Still, when I hear "be yourself" I can't help but wonder which one they mean. Is myself the one that boards himself up with the people he loves in a place he loves? or is he the one that goes dancing at clubs and picks up strange women he'll immediately ditch? Is he the compassionate one who'll do anything for his friends or the one who'll leave them by the wayside if they don't follow his every word. The only real answer that makes any sense is that he's one of these sometimes and another others. We can't help but be a plethora of contradictory things, after all, we're only human.

"I am large
I contain multitudes"
-Walt Whitman