Who are you?

The answer may be stranger than you care to say

For many years, in these January weeks leading up to the Oscars, I would do an Academy Award series, guessing at what movies would be likely to be nominated and featuring six of them. The Christmas season freshly over, it was always a last-minute rush to choose the movies and get the flyer out so that people could see as many of the films as possible before we explored them together. Sometimes, of course, the movies were already out of major theatres and, often not having seen them myself, required long drives to tiny theatres on the other side of Toronto where they were still showing. Once, I shared the whole theatre with one other patron. That was Tom Hanks in the riveting Captain Phillips. The theatre was so tiny, I felt I’d be swept away in all the water!

And sometimes, the films were weirder than I had thought they would be when I chose them. Birdman was one such film and it almost didn’t make the series. Shows how much I know about film: Birdman won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography and it has a Rotten Tomato rating of 91%.

The film is about the crisis an actor may ultimately have with reality if they get caught in the world of their characters, skimming across the face of real life in the guise of another. Michael Keaton, playing “washed-up actor” Riggan Thomas, slips sideways through the curtains of reality with regularity, taking on the persona of “Birdman”, a character he played in a successful superhero trilogy and for which he is best known. The critical analysis of the film was all over the map, no single genre seeming to claim its territory with any measure of authority and everyone finding another reason to celebrate its extraordinary success.

Birdman: eye to eye

But, psychosis notwithstanding, isn’t that slipping into and out of character something we all do in our daily lives? Yes, there are those who have a clear understanding of who they are, how they want to live out their lives, and, if they wish to influence the world around them, exactly how it would be best for them to accomplish that. They might get out of bed every morning and go to sleep every night as exactly the same person, playing the same character day in and day out. You might even think you know them.

But there are those who approach the “Who am I?” question with considerably more ambiguity, knowing that the answer given two weeks ago may not be the same answer given today. Or tomorrow. Or next year, if they live that long.

The desire for emotional, intellectual, and relational integrity can challenge us. As a clergy person for most of my adult life, there was a distinct line between who I was at work and who I was away from work. Not that the me on one side had integrity and the me on the other side didn’t, but that the role of a clergy person, like the role of a lawyer or teacher, requires one hold themselves within a set of standards and behaviours appropriate to the relationships they develop. It isn’t always easy not to swear, you know.

But the line doesn’t exist exclusively between our personal and our professional lives. Add in being a daughter, parent, sibling, citizen, neighbour, friend, and it becomes a bit bonkers trying to find any sort of inherent integrity. We don’t share all our intimate problems and issues with our neighbours. We may not share them with family. We feel compelled to be decent to the people in front of us in the grocery line-up even when we are seething about the argument we just had with a co-worker. We show up for a night out at the theatre and present an appropriately subdued demeanour as the lights go down and at the pub for a night out with friends with a giddily gregarious one. We are not the same person from one event or place or group to another.

So, just who the hell are we?

Birdman never seemed to find out. Any maybe we shouldn’t, either.

"Know thyself" didn’t seem  
as though it would be that hard. 
After all, I am who I am 
and surely, if anyone knows who I am, 
I know who I am. 
But accompanied on this journey, 
I came to realize  
that I know little of who I am. 

Looking within, 
all I see 
is distorted by the same imperfect lenses 
with which I view the world, 
the same neurological synapses 
filling in the blanks, 
jumping to conclusions 
based on interpretations 
stored long ago, 
fooling me into believing 
that what I see is what is true. 

Accompanied,  
I saw more than I thought I needed to, 
more than I believed was within 
and so, too, 
more than I believed was out there 
influencing, 
forming 
who I am. 

May we ever see through accompanied eyes 
and add to our circumscribed view 
the imperfect perceptions of those around us 
that, together, 
we might walk the path 
toward those truths we have courage enough to brave, 
flawed and fragmented  
as they may ever be.

So, I ask these questions, and this is no longer part of the poem: Who are you? Who are you when you are by yourself? When you’re with your peers or neighbours? Are you different when with your closest friend? Who are you when you’re out in public? How about at a theatre event? When do you let loose? When you’re alone or with someone else? When with people you’ll never see again or those you know you can trust? With whom can you cry? Anyone?”

Finally, if you were to come to visit yourself but in another guise, were to sit awhile, have a cup of tea, chat, laugh, dream of what tomorrow might bring, which you would you rather the other you, the listening you, be: the one others see and know and love or the one that you know only you really know?