You Are Not Your Persona

You Are Not Your Persona

Who is it you think you are? What? What is it that you believe to be true regarding your traits? Think about the time you were a baby -- when you could remember. Now, think about who you were as a teenager (if you aren’t one currently). Now, think about who you are now as an adult who has been through so many of life’s lessons. The experience you’ve gained along with the knowledge of things you never knew before. How have you applied that experience and knowledge to your life?

This is what I mean when I say, “You are not your persona.” Your persona isn’t who or what you started out to be. It’s who and what you made it to be. From the time you were just an itty-bitty baby, you and those around you began to create “you.” “You” is what I call your persona, but it’s not who you are. Everything you’ve heard, seen, smelled, tasted, felt, and thought was a means of creating your character.

Example: A mother and father, and even the loved ones of a small child, tells this child that he/she is kind, loving, and smart. They say to the child this every day. That child hears these things and begins to believe to himself/herself, “I am kind. I am loving. I am smart.” Ultimately, the child’s nature is a kind, loving, and smart nature because it’s what he/she believes based on what he/she has absorbed every day.

Now say someone(s) comes around and tells the child that he/she is unintelligent, dirty, and gets picked on every day by bullies. The information again is being absorbed by this small child, and even though the child knows he/she is kind, smart, and loving, he/she now begins to feel a little bit of doubt. That doubt is the beginning of change within the child as it changed their way of thinking. At that moment, that child who believed he/she is smart, kind, and loving is now a child who is unsure of these things. Without constant and consistent reassurance, the child won’t be able to tell the difference honestly.

I like to think of a newborn as sort of a “blank slate.” What is it you see, hear, and feel around you? You’re not quite sure as it’s a brand new world. You’ve yet to experience anything and can’t comprehend anything just yet. With that being said, who were you before you began to remember? Who were you before you found out you were kind, or loving, or smart? You were, and still are, everything. You just don’t remember. You don’t remember because the persona that manifested made you forget.

When a family member tells you that you act just like your mother or father, you oblige. Do you know why you act just like your mother or father? It’s because you absorbed the information of what you saw and heard and perceived that information to “self.” We are taught by the information our senses absorb, what people tell us, and the very essence of life and nature. It’s all about perception -- how you take that information and turn it into something you believe to be true, even if it isn’t. How would you know if it’s truth or illusion?

Everything about what or who you think you are is created. How is human created? How is the word “human” created, and why does it describe a particular being and not another? What exactly makes you “human?” We know someone created the word and others believed it, so it became absolute to us.

The same can be said for your persona and the traits that make it yours. It was created by the information absorbed through the senses, and you perceived it as a way of life. Then it became absolute throughout your conscious, pushing away the truth of “self” within your subconscious. You can teach someone how to hate or love, but you can’t teach someone how to be human. Just like you can’t teach a dog to be a dog. It knows what it is and how to act like one from birth. We as “humans” don’t know what it is to be human until we’re taught how to walk like one or talk like one or BE like one. Again, I ask, what makes us human? All of this is based on what? What others tell you. These same people are telling you to dress a certain way, to live a certain way, to hate who they hate or love who they love.

A broken heart can change one’s persona, which affects one’s actions, which alters one’s path taken. When you say the words, “that’s just who I am,” understand that that is not who you are and never were - it’s what you and others created. You aren’t born mean. You aren’t born to hate or work a dead-end job the entirety of your existence. How could you be? There weren’t any jobs when humankind was created, and you didn’t know what hate was until you were taught.

I believe we are born to just “be” - to love and exist. We just forgot. We forgot how to just “be” as we’ve forgotten who we are. We created a “self” for identity and gave it a name. My name is Michael, yet it isn’t a name I chose. Someone chose it for me. I didn’t choose to be a writer. I chose to create as I was created, as we have all been created, as we continue to create each and every single day. That’s why every time you think about something negative, you feel negative, and it begins to change your perspective. You just created an illusion that didn’t even exist until you made it exist. You felt something that was never there. That persona and those traits were never there until it was created! You are not your persona because you can change your persona! You can change your physical body. You cannot change your being. Still, you should love it anyway. That brings me back to the question. Who is it you think you are and what?

-Michael Mangruen-Brown 11/17/2020