Inspiration from Computer Viruses
My younger self would enjoy reading up lists of computer viruses and trying to understanding what some of their properties are. Unlike today’s world of ransomware, the most frightening viruses in the day (e.g. CIH) rendered computers inoperable by either wiping the BIOS (relatively uncommon) or the master boot record (more common).
But one characteristic of computer viruses always astounded me – that of polymorphism. In short, a virus that can exhibit different physical forms while having similar characteristics. But polymorphism extends beyond the world of computer viruses to our multitude of forms and perceived personas as well.
The Real Me, Can You Stand Up?
“Who am I? What do I stand for?”
These are some questions that are responsible for countless sleepless nights, across all age groups. The struggle for identity is a fundamental one, even if not entirely critical in accordance to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
But identity itself is not simply a single construct. In fact, the summation of all our personas and selves in different settings is arguably what constructs our identity. And this is quite reasonable; we do not expect (or want) people to bring in bedroom affairs into workplaces. Neither do we want workplace secrets to somehow end up in the bedroom.
But what we value in said summation also matters, because these personas and selves we construct, too, depend on the hats we wear in life. One way to illustrate this is to look at your schedule and ask what side of you is relevant. For instance, for me:
- Work self (approx. 40 hours/week; exclude involvement in other professional bodies)
- Industry self (depends on how much you network)
- Hobby self (depends on your hobbies)
- Student self (I am also a Masters’ student right now)
- Son to my parents
- Boyfriend to a significant other
- And more…
So which self is the “real” self? What does it mean by being “authentic”? It simply means, how you interpret the hat you wear depending on that situation. There may be more fundamental characteristics of self that can be used to derive these intermediate personalities to fit the social, political and cultural contexts of these locations, but the point is that the contexts one finds oneself in will affect what “real” self to exhibit (and in turn, how others exhibit said “real” self).
Identity Crises
There are cases where the balance of priorities skew to the point that one hat predominates everything else. But that can be quite dangerous.
A sudden loss of capability of dealing with said hat, or that hat being robbed away from us can potentially incapacitate a human mentally. For example, someone who has built their reputation around an empire of work will eventually have to leave said empire in the hands of other capable hands. And at some point, said person will either willingly leave (retire), or be forced out (retrenched, or ousted). What happens next?
This shall be left as an exercise for future musings (if anyone wants to hear about them)
Exclusive Relationships and the Sub-Hats Within
Perhaps, to complexify matters, even within a hat, there are sub-hats we wear. Let us decompose the work self, where we adopt the work hat. We clearly have different ways of treating subordinates, fellow colleagues/teammates and bosses. This is almost trivial to understand.
But, arguably one of the most complex hats is that of an exclusive relationship. (In this article I will not discuss parental dynamics; this opens another layer of complexity)
Unlike many of the hats which are… “very clear cut”, this one is confusing and confounding.
Exclusive relationships typically begin with quite a crescendo of happy feelings. In popular literature, this is also known as the “honeymoon period”. Couples are pretty happy; they date well initially and everything is quite lovey-dovey. Somehow everything is agreeable. Like all positive stages, these naturally lead to building up of expectations and hopes. But these will eventually hit roadblocks in different forms.
At some point, we are only human. We cannot be infinitely ideal. We will exhibit some bad habits and behaviours. Try as we may to improve them, there will be some that just can’t be corrected (some examples include snoring, seeming forgetfulness to tidy up and certain ritualistic tendencies that are neither logical nor rational outside said person’s frame of mind).
Or perhaps we exhibit some self-doubt. Beyond the lovey-dovey feelings, we may question if we are all that valuable to our exclusive partner. Can these last forever? And if they don’t, will I lose him/her? And loss aversion is a serious psychological bias that cripples many. What if they find out about some of my worst imperfections?
We already describe bliss, fear, frustration through one small section of the courtship journey. None of these feelings arose from malice. And these feelings arose because of different hats we play even within the exclusive relationship. Sometimes we wear the fun-loving hat. Other times we have rather terse, serious discussions. Yet in other moments, we are also playing the role of supportive partner or executioner of our other half’s wishes. We may have to also go the distance to unlock frustrations, trauma, and then cry with our other half, and assure them that all of these are part of a life journey.
Love, too, is polymorphic.