I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am, and who others are, I started reading Jacques Lacan.
You think you look a certain way from looking in the mirror, but you don’t recognize yourself in pictures.
You feel naturally funny, beautiful, or smart because your family told you so, but there’s no guarantee that strangers see this too.
This is because our self-image was never ours to begin with, we learn who we are from pictures and other people — no matter who we want to be, we never learn who we actually are, because different people, hold different views about us.
“How can I help?” -> “You think I’m helpless”
“You’ve lost weight!” -> “you thought I was fat”
Directness, being quiet, or expressionless -> read as rudeness and arrogance
Praising work -> seen as disingenuous
Words are not ours, we use them, but we can’t control how they land.
Such concepts are interesting in the sense that they attempt to understand the self and our lived reality, to deeper understand why we’re frustrated. Many of our conflicts come not just from such misunderstandings, but expecting others to see the world the way we see ourselves.
Some part of us always goes unseen, what we did before, our life history, which in some way shape how we act, but also the way other see us — leaving us all equally misunderstood.
