We are what we pretend to be...

Here's something that has popped up a couple of times in the last week or so. It's the concept that we are all pretending - more specifically that we are all pretending to be somebody else. Can that be right? If so, who am I pretending to be? Who are my friends pretending to be? Why can't we just be ourselves?

In order to be ourselves, we must first know ourselves. There's your first hurdle right there. I don't think any one of us truly knows ourselves 100%. Perhaps that's why it's so easy to become enamored with somebody who seems to know you better than you know yourself. The truth is, maybe they do.

Some are indeed more enlightened, more self aware though. But even so, those people are probably pretending too, right? Perhaps they're only pretending to be someone better or smarter than their true self.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut

The first spot where this thought along a thread of similarities popped up recently was in an episode of "Life". I'll skip the synopsis for now, but the main character, Charlie Crews, is a detective who tends to have a very zen outlook on life. He has a ton of interesting things to say (a credit to the writers of "Life"). In this recent episode, he said "Buddha says everyone pretends to be someone else." So now we have two people... well, three if you consider the fictional character of Charlie Crews... who think that everyone is pretending. What kind of message is this?

This is what led me to many of the above thoughts. Later in the same episode, Crews also wondered "Who was the Buddha pretending to be?" and that "Perhaps he was pretending to be the Buddha" (paraphrased). He was pretending to be himself, or to go a step further, he was pretending to be a better version of himself.

Entry two into this chain of perception comes in a slightly different form. I read somebody's profile today, and they said:

"I do the best imitiation [sic] of myself."

OF COURSE! If we are all living day to day pretending to be ourselves, then it only stands to reason that we should be most apt to imitate ourselves. Believing that I am pretending to be the person I want to be, and in agreement with Vonnegut's position that we are what we pretend to be, then I will eventually become that better person. Spending each moment of each day pretending to be that person should make me best prepared to imitate that person.

So... Who are you pretending to be?