"Me, I do not look like myself, I am lonesome"

So often we are clouded by others' judgements, expectations and desires that we forget ourselves. We forget WHO we are, where we came from. I have come to a very complex understanding or at least realization that we transform into many things and that those things may only be part of us, not our whole. I have been contemplating this idea that we can wear many "hats" or faces to become many people. I have practiced this for months and sometimes I realize I fall in love with it- but it has transformed into more of a phrase: "fake it to make it". I notice this in Shakespeare's characters (Prospero) and myself. Guilty Or successful? Those hats- these faces, can be poisonous to us, but if anything we have the experience of being what we want, think we need to be, or really are. I think about this everyday. Who do I want to be? Who SHOULD I be? I had a conversation with someone recently and ironically enough, it was the person who really taught me that we need to wear many faces just to get by (though they probably don't know that). Sometimes it is just plain necessary. We may be wearing a different face, like Hermione, but the face we really have continues to stay with us, age, we are old and new all at once. I pulled some quotes from Shakespeare that portrayed this idea of confusion within ourselves about who we are and how we get to the place of understanding and becoming. I truly think that for any of us though, it takes us meeting our end to get back to our beginning, to us. I am leaving it to you to define "end".



Who are you?

"art ignorant of what thou art" (The Tempest I:2:18)

"Sometimes we are devils to ourselves" (Troilus and Cressida IV:4:94)

"I am not what I am" (Hamlet I:1:66)

"He who flatters you makes war upon your life" (Pericles I:2:45)

"More than I seem, and less than I was born to" (Henry IV pt.3 III:1:56)

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (King Lear)

"...no life
...no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more;
Never, never, never, never, never." (King Lear V:3:303-306)

"I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead" (King Lear IV:7:46-48)


Who am I? what deceives me into becoming something else? "If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me..." (King Lear IV:7:71-72).