I’m not trying to be deep or philosophical here, I mean it in a literal sense. You’ve never met yourself. Sure, you see yourself in mirrors, but it’s an inverted version of you in a way that’s incredibly off-putting, according to the TikTok populace. You see yourself in pictures, but they make you cringe in a way that can’t possibly represent you accurately. Videos don’t help much either—you watch yourself move at 30 frames per second through an iPhone screen, but it’s flat. Even at 120 frames per second in 4K, you’re no closer to truly seeing yourself.

There’s no honest way to experience yourself in the three-dimensional, physical or temporal world. There are some things you will know about others but will simply never know about yourself. The nuances of your mannerisms, your micro-expressions, the way your posture shifts when you're unsure—they will forever escape you. These things exist only for others to experience, but never yourself.

It’s this thought that makes me wonder whether the people close to us are the only ones who could give an honest and intimate account that authentically represents who we really are.

But even that idea troubles me. Because once you admit to that concept, identity starts to feel social, performative even.

Say you gathered every person you’ve ever known into a room and handed them a clipboard. Check the boxes that define me, please. Or if none of them do, check the box beside “others” and fill in what you think does. What do you think they would say? What adjectives or characteristics would come out on top?

Are you overeager? Aloof? Whimsical? Or are you simply just a man with hair longer than it should be? Would you agree with the consensus, even if it feels like the antithesis of who you perceive yourself to be? But if humans are social creatures—if we derive so much meaning from connection—and if our interactions happen via this avatar of ourselves… does it even matter who we think we are in our own heads?

I’m not in love with the idea that our identity is built from things that have happened to us—contextually or otherwise—rather than who we really are. It feels unforgivingly external and beyond our control. And the truth is that language, the main tool we have of expressing who we are, often feels woefully insufficient. I love words, words are lovely, but I find myself constrained by them. Words are, after all, a human invention, and it tangles in dead knots when dealing with the formless, abstract impulses of emotion. By the time you’ve sat with yourself and taken the time to solve and untangle it, the fleeting moment is no more.

It makes me wish the idea of souls were real. Not just in a poetic, dreamy, or spiritual sense, but in an oh-my-science, turns-out-we’re-just-meat-puppets-controlled-by-a-gleaming-ball-of-consciousness-attached-to-our-hearts-from-a-temporal-plane kind of way. Perhaps then, when I look in the mirror, I’d see something whole, something perfect. A single glowing orb, glowing, rather than a fractured array of varying angles that reflect a different version of me.

So—who am I? Who are you?

Maybe you’re not your thoughts, but whatever the thing is that possesses consciousness of them. Maybe you’re the thousands of different yous that exist inside someone else’s head, or a product of your environment, carved by your insecurities and aspirations. How much of you is who you want yourself to be—and how much is just a desperate grip on a past sense of identity, a fading belief of who you once were?

Forgive me for the existential dump. I think I’m writing all this to amend and sooth the uneasy feelings I have unsettled within me—to synchronise my mind, body and whatever soul I might have. But I also think it’s a note—to myself, and to you—to stop trying so hard to define who you are. We could be all of those things, and none of them. Would it even matter?

Let it play out and observe these thoughts and alter egos. Loosen our grip on the fixed idea of self and reserve a vast space for life to play out. Quit clinging onto the different versions of us that exist in the heads of others because they never really exist in concrete. Trying to pin them down is nothing more than a failed attempt at trying to capture a fleeting moment.

Obviously, it’s much easier said than done. I would know, I’m still trying. I still forget, daily, hourly. But whatever this ramble has made you feel, whatever reflections it surfaced, whatever paradoxes it revealed about yourself—multiply that by eight billion. Hopefully, the same wave of strange, unspoken sense of comfort and solidarity washes over you as it did me.

Maybe being undefinable is the most human thing of all. Maybe it’s what tethers you to the people who perceive you.

I like to think of people as orbs of varying colours that extend beyond what is comprehensible. Each one radiating a colour we’ll never have the words to classify—colours that are unique to each person. And in that image, we’re floating, orb-to-orb. The light we emit may be different, but it doesn’t clash. It’s still light, and it’s beautiful.