Hello Steemit! You have a CREATOVERT here!
I've been here for a few days but since I'm such a master procrastinator, I never had the time to craft a good introduction post. Tried once, a couple of days ago but my hands froze after few minutes and I entered my favourite hangout place... the writer's block.
I don't know why but describing myself is a very daunting task for me. This is the second time I've put some intense effort to describe & introduce myself.
So, Who am I?
Apparently, I don't know. I have no clue. Tried answering this on my personal blog a few weeks ago.
http://bhandariamit.com.np/aquestforselfdiscovery/
I don't think I got anywhere.
I've read many #introducemyself and #introduceyourself posts here and what I found is that the way we place ourselves in this universe and proclaim who we are, is vague, highly debatable and primitive.
- Some of us attach ourselves to the abstract symbols we were assigned to us at the time of our birth and derive our identity from our documents, origin or various tags offered to us by the society.
- Some of us derive the essence of who we are by analyzing what we do and what we have accomplished till now. We assign an identity to ourselves according to our actions, interests, profession, achievements, medals or certificates.
- Some of us define ourselves through the blurry recollection of our memories.
- Some of us like to represent ourselves with the character, principles, ideas and codes that we have programmed ourselves with.
- Some like the idea of imaginary beings like souls or spirits and some people rather prefer to tag themselves with their individual consciousness.
- Some of us even limit ourselves to the physical structure of ourselves and the projection in the mirror.
But in my point of view, these are all mere extensions of yourself. Some quite important and others quite insignificant.
Join me in a thought experiment and find out how you are defining yourself and from where you're deriving your sense of identity.
- If I ripped off your birth documents & legal papers and erased your identity from the internet, would you be still you?
- If I somehow snatched all your degrees, your skills, knowledge and your accomplishments, would you still be you?
- If by some accident, you altered or deleted your memories, would you still be you?
- If you encounter and experience a series of countless paradigm shifts, would you be still you?
- If you drugged yourself & brought down your consciousness level in a state of being half-awake and half asleep, would you be just 50% of who you are? Or would you still be the full version of yourself?
- If I altered your face through plastic surgery and exchanged most of your major organs and parts (except brain)... would you be still you?
One can get a clear & concise idea from where they draw their identity by answering these questions.
But the thing about one's true identity is that it's not a fixed & enclosed set of information that we limit ourselves to. Plus it's riddled with lots of philosophical dilemmas and unanswerable questions.
For example, If I describe myself here by selecting few of the above-mentioned parameters and create a self-image, that's my identity according to myself.
But what about the identity others create about yourself? Does their thoughts and perspective matter?
Or your self-created identity is the only one that counts?
And maybe when you're assigning yourself an identity, you're missing a lot of key information about yourself which shapes your personality. Maybe your parents, siblings or friends know more about you than yourself in some of the aspects?
In that case, the identity created by your near ones may be more accurate and you may be living your daily life without fully knowing who you are!
Think about this... A part of you is just trashed into some corner of your unconscious mind which you have no idea about, and it doesn't even make a difference in your regular life. Or maybe it can drastically change your life if only you would find your true self. I've met a lot of people suffering from inferiority complex and they often undermine their abilities and their true inner potential... and it decelerates them from moving forward because they're always embracing self-doubts and insecurity.
There's not a single authentic guidebook here on this planet which instructs us how to derive our identity. Maybe nobody knows who they are?
When asked to introduce ourselves, We desperately try and put ourselves in a little circle, allocate different views and opinions & create a self-image of ourselves; And the perspective that we have about ourselves establishes who we are in our minds and creates an identity.
But the circle, in which we put ourselves and stuff ideas about who we are, isn't rigid or permanent.
It's volatile. And the self-image created by you, which you are currently clinging to, is so changeable.
It might even change over a small tweet or a blog post like this.
It might change over a short SMS or an insightful video.
It might change over a message in a beggar's cardboard or an advertisement billboard.
You might even completely rewrite your identity over a small coffee conversation, a piece of serene music, an aesthetically pleasing art display or anything that you see & observe in your daily life.
There are just countless possibilities because the nature of the thought generation algorithms of our brains is chaotic and unpredictable. I would bet all my money on the behaviour of bizarre quantum particles than putting my chips in the nature of our thoughts.
And It's pretty useless to attribute ourselves to a certain set of information if you ask me.
Almost like writing with an ink pen on a running stream of water.
Why so?
Because neither your body nor your mind stays the same with each following second. You might have heard that within a span of 365 days, 98% the atoms in your body are already replaced with the other identical ones. And within a span of seven years, you will have completely replaced every particle in your body. So I ask you again... Fast forward yourself to seven years from this moment in time and ask, Am I still ME?
I love the whirlpool-metaphor of the great philosopher Alan Watts. It's like we are all just different whirlpools in a large river of spacetime, occupying small spots in different areas.
We all have a seemingly definite outer shape and appearance and although you'll identify a whirlpool being the same whirlpool 10 seconds forwards or ten seconds backwards in the time from the present moment, the water in the whirlpool never stays the same. On the molecular level, the constituents of the whirlpool are changing every nanosecond.
The whole point of this long rant is to say that the introduction I give you here right now stays in the blockchain for eternity, but it might be completely irrelevant just a few days later.
Maybe I'm just overthinking and taking a friendly introduction post too far and maybe I'm just too serious about this.
Or maybe and just maybe we should all keep aside a few minutes every day from our hectic schedule of our daily life, and contemplate about who we are and what's our place in the universe every now and then.
Because to find yourself ...
Is to unravel one of the biggest mysteries of the universe.
Just in case if you think I'm doing injustice with the topic 'Introduce Yourself', here's what my whirlpool currently constitutes of :
Hello, I'm a creatovert with an unhealthy addiction towards information.
I love to gobble up everything this universe has to offer.
I'm not an expert on anything but my friends consider me a live Google & Wikipedia bot.
My interests shifts from one subject to the other every week and currently, I'm trying to develop e-commerce sites for my clients from scratch with zero coding skills on my account and I'm also participating in various ICO events recently and learning about cryptocurrency.
I'm also learning a little about Digital marketing, Design Thinking and Autocad from various online resources every day.
I love researching for loopholes and hunting for opportunities.
I hate being told what to do and what not by self-proclaimed life experts so, I lead a pretty reckless life.
I'm also a chef... I cook up interesting stories and thought-provoking articles like this one:
http://bhandariamit.com.np/symphonyofinspiration/
I'm a mechanic too, I fix broken hearts and damaged spirits.
I like to call myself a contrarian thinker and an analyst; A psychological warrior set out to eradicate outdated thinking patterns.
I love listening to music with pumping beats. ( Join the #jukebox chatroom in PALnet channel in Discord and you'll always find me there)
I play football with my friends a few games every week and I also love sketching cartoonized portraits like this one in my free time :
()
She's a foreign friend of mine.
I love connecting with people who are passionate about their life. You'll find me on most of the platforms by the username @creatovert !
See you again in next blog post. Keep steeming 😃
Ah! yes... I nearly forgot!
!()
That's me by the way.
This is powerful! I was going through my comments and found yours and I'm very glad I read this post, even though I'm late by a few days. This introduceyourself will be a difficult one to one-up. Definitely following you! Also, I miss Nepal!
Wow @cabernet ... welcome to my blog :)
Thank you for reading my post. I think I set the bar too high... this post gathered a lot of amazing responses and I doubt whether I can come up with something relatively good enough next time lol.
And thank you for following me back and resteeming my post!
Me too! I'm in India here currently pursuing a technical course on Automobile Engineering.
There are days when I just want to pack my bags and runaway at midnight from my hostel :D
Visit Nepal soon and make a Blog post about it here :)
Umm, I doubt this kind of work with so much creativity and eloquence is a one time thing.
I totally feel ya! For me, it's more than just one backpack and a bus ride away :'( haha
I can't wait!! :D
Looking forward to more of your posts!
Your response boosted up my self-esteem a little. Thank you :D
I have a few unfinished drafts. Will complete it and post soon :)
Welcome to Steem Community @creatovert! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.
In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch
thank you @newsteemians :)
Welcome! Looks like you're a deep thinker...nice!
Yes I love deep stuff @rebeccamorgan :) Thank you!
@creatovert Welcome. Loved the intro, unique and catchy. I'm sure you're not the only one who had the same struggle with getting their intro started. Extreme procrastinator here too, but working on changing that. lol. Your cartooning is pretty good! Looking forward to seeing more. Best wishes to you here! - @splendorhub
Like this display. Good show.
Hello @splendorhub Thank you so much. I think I saw you somewhere in Discord. Are you in PALnet or SteemitBloggers?
Nora, I checked out your introduction post to know more about you. Is that your plane lol?
I'll keep on sketching and blogging here :) Stay tuned!
@creatovert I tried Discord but was having some issues with my account. My intro was so so... lol
The plane you saw, was mine...for pictures only :( you have yourself a new follower. Wishing great success here! Steem on :) - @splendorhub
Hahaha... I know you'll be able to afford one soon ;) And thank you for following me back :)
Can I nominate you for the 7 day black and white challenge? Is lots of fun 🤞😊
Thank you so much @splendorhub .
I would love to participate But Nora, I need to buy a good camera first. I will participate soon after a few weeks :) Thank you again for thinking me as a nominee. Do notify me about other exciting challenges like this. :)
@creatovert That's cool. I will have to let you in on my secret, I only use my phone camera :)(and) I'll be great to see what you photograph. Let me know! Best wishes to you always.
I don't have a good phone too lol. It's crap. :D
Maybe I'll borrow a camera from my friends soon. :)
welcome to steemit! you are an amazing person and I hope to see more of your work here soon! From @jahangirbalti
Hey @jahangirbalti thank you :) I've followed everyone here who has left a warm response :)
I'll soon come up with another intersting post.
Wow. What an impressive way to talk about introduction.
I don't think that I myself need to identify my self. But when others think of me and want to know how to deal with me, THEY need all this identifications you talked about. It is not so much of a mystery, from my point of view. It's just crutches we need for we have altered our environment and now are stuck with split lives and professions.
As we live in a division of labor and process-divided society, we also have shared identities that are tailored to the space we enter. If we come to the office, we are office workers, we go to the doctor, we are patients, we drive on a picnic, we are picnicers.
In truth, of course, we're not all that, but who we are is actually much less important to ourselves than to all the others who try to assess us and become wise out of us.
Turn your view around and you will find that you have to know your prey like the prehistoric hunter in order to be able to assess its next steps. At that time you may not have given it a name, so maybe identity was much more fleeting and we were freer. Today, we are less free, but much more bound to estimation. Without any reference to a bound identity, you will find it difficult to judge a stranger in your sphere because you need a code of conduct to accommodate him/her. Without this crutch we would not be able to communicate well. Of course, we have exaggerated excessively, because we would be very frightened to meet someone who seems to have no identity at all.
My own promotion article can be found here:
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@erh.germany/pleased-to-meet-you
@vimukthi made me aware of this post.
Welcome to you and whoever you are!! :))
Wow... I find this one powerful and quite funny at the same time... :D
Your perspective is unique to view Identity as a tool. Fully agree with all of your points.
I just partially agree on this one though. When we just have the basic idea of someone, there's always something missing in an interaction between two individuals. It's just normal Q&A & dull shallow conversations. The crutch helps and gives us something to talk about but the conversation is meaningless. I think that if there's no value to be added, insights to be shared or mindsets to be changed... the words are a waste of time & energy. So, we may be able to communicate but the conversation is of low-value. I would rather keep myself zipped up than to participate in any short & shallow talks.
thank you:)
Have you made the experience not to care about the outer coat of a person (his momentarily taken identity) and looked through it? Did you sense his or her presence underneath small talk? Is it up to the other person to give meaning to a conversation or is it of more importance to encourage the other one to show what's deeper to see & feel within him or her?
What if you were always able to overcome the cruch from your side? Even to dropp all expectations?
For my part I rarely make this experience to free myself from the wish that other people make the effort to reach what is true for the moment. But when it happens, it's the best:)
Most of the time when I look through the small talk, I soon find dead hollow ends. It's very rare to find great value beyond the outer coat of a person. Like the character in my profile pic, I have a tendency to make people open themselves up to me. But People with great value inside them are rare. Most times I've met someone I've had a deep conversation with, there was not much of an outer coat to begin with.
what a pitty! But I guess you are on a good way to compensate that, as well as the rest of us who like to get in conversations here on the platform. This gives hope and the realization that there are more people than one might assume with what we are seeking.
This is the reason I'm so in love with steemit. We are continents apart in a crowd noise of 7+ billions and yet we connect.
That's something to ponder upon @erh.germany ... I don't know why but I almost automatically identify & judge people through their eyes and their tone of voice and that pretty much reveals everything you know... The gaze in their eyes and the passion in their voice pretty much describes who they are and predetermines my reaction. I might need to change myself though...
Thanks, @creatovert. As we as social beings swing together, my voice and tone would swing with yours, if we would get to meet each other physically.
When I encounter people the first time I would probably do some small (identity)talk in order to feel, listen and gaze at them and they would probably do the same, no? If I prepare myself to concentrate my best interest on them, it might change something. From superficiality and dishonesty to something more authentic. I guess that change only happens when I am ready for expecting the best out of humans. Of course this is no guarantee for a valuable encounter. But chances become bigger that my "service" may work.
In the end it's more of a habit one can learn to cultivate. I am far from perfect and probably won't reach the highest ideal:)
Thank you for your response. Learned a thing or two from you @erh.germany ... I'll try and apply that. I guess I just need to reprogram my habit then
Damn you does sound like my clone. Human relationships should only differ from business in the kind of value involved. Human interactions that doesn't carry value is a spiritual bankruptcy. One should keep spam out of their lives even while they are Away From Keyboard.
Not only identity but all knowledge including physics and mathematics are simply just Tools.
A is A because it's named that way and 1+1=2 because it's designed that way. In binary systems 1+1=10
I found out that my thinking aligns with http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Instrumentalism#Early_Instrumentalism
impressive way to introduce yourself , very good
follow you
Such a great and detailed post, makes one wonder ! Deep stuff.
Thank you so much @trev03 brother. This is just a small start ;) I'll keep diving deeper and deeper :)
That's the best Introduce Yourself post I've ever read - well done! perhaps we all need to have a few sessions with a psychologist to establish our own personal narratives before we write our intro posts? lol. Here's my intro, allow me to introduce you to one of my false selves :)
Hahaha... You're taking it too far lol.
Just checked out your post and followed you @kate-m ... you're so awesome :)
lol, you know I actually would love to have the money for a psychologist though! I've been reading loads about attachment theory and I peg myself as an avoidant-dismissive attachment type. Apparently it's one of the things that's typical, not being able to construct a coherent childhood and general life narrative. I always thought I had quite a coherent narrative of the idyllic middle-class childhood growing up in the wilds of the northwest of Ireland with twee parents exuding wholesome family values, but when you start to take a closer look you realise that it starts to fall apart and generally end up on its head. The happy family discourse that I swallowed for so many years was really a forced hollow façade masking what was an inherently dysfunctional emotionally bereft psychological war-zone overseen by at least one narcissist (covert introvert) who disguised as the perfect gentle soul. Maybe we're all just best just staying asleep and let those sleeping dogs lie!! (like the rest of my siblings do!).
Cheers for the complement - look forward to seeing more posts and swapping more comments - Steem oooot!
@kate-m
I wish I had the ability to pen down all of my overflowing emotions & chaotic thoughts like you.
It was a bit difficult for me to fully grasp your words since English isn't my first language; But what I understood from your narrative is that you had a rough childhood and dysfunctional family. I feel sorry for you Kate... I too have a dysfunctional family.
On average, more than eighty percent of the families in the world are dysfunctional so you're not alone.
And if you're kidding it's okay but If you're not, I don't think you need to visit any psychologist or psychiatrist because you're awesome just the way you are.
To quote something from my favourite show here...
" I don't think going to a rented office in a strip mall to listen to some agent of averageness explain which words mean which feelings has ever helped anyone do anything.
I think it's helped a lot of people get comfortable and stop panicking, which is a state of mind we value in the animals we eat, but not something I want for myself."
Some wounds are better when allowed to self-heal itself.
No I wasn't joking. My parents have intimacy issues so there weren't quite enough cuddles and words of validation to go around in my family, love was a finite resource and each new kid that came along stole the focus of attention of the Mother. My dad has always been emotionally absent and fed out complements and words of validation as though there was a need for strict rationing. It fostered an atmosphere of resentment, rancour, anger, paranoia and suspicion amongst my siblings. I think because I was the baby of the family I got off lightly as I didn't go through the trauma of another baby coming along and stealing the lime light. I don't harbour any resentment, whereas it seems to be the fuel that drives my older siblings.
A psychiatrist is a privilege and a luxury, but for those who can afford it I thnk it can serve a role and I wouldn't resent them it. It allows the healing power of the word to flow. I have been guiding my own healing through using words with friends, and consecrating with sacred plants, and practicing meditation. For me, if I were to have a psychiatrist, it wouldn't be to make me calm, it would be like a training ground to practice forming intimacy and the ability to be vulnerable in a safe place. Someone who's willing to sit and listen to me talk and so help me figure things out.
Somebody recently told me that nobody is 100% awesome. It's true. :) We were talking about magical mythical unicorn people at the time.
@kate-m ... I don't think we should be blaming our parents for scarring our memories.
When I was a few steps lower from where I'm now, I used to blame and curse them every day for damaging me psychologically and making me feel like a depressed soul lost in a purgatory.
But now when I think about it, it's pretty unintelligent to do so.
Because a bigger game's going on in here and collectively as a species, we're playing it very badly because the rules are blurry and incomprehensible and nobody owns a guidebook on how to live your life. Our ancestors tried hard to form order and contain the chaos by forming religions but now as I see it, it's a failed experiment (although a good one though)... the consequences of our little actions go a long way and we're never fully aware of what we're doing or saying.
If you just remove the individual perspective and think as a whole species, you'll find that the problems are within ourselves. We're triggering destructive chain reactions knowingly or unknowingly and like the 'Butterfly effect,' it's creating a whole different timeline than what it's supposed to be every second.
Bizarre events happen every day and some good too... and it links to other events and affects them. The outcomes of those events affect other outcomes and you never know when just a small action whether good or bad will create a huge impact and change the preceding timeline drastically.
When 7 billion people equipped with equally chaotic mindsets is crammed into a small planet, chaos is bound to happen. That doesn't mean the world is doomed. There's a good share of order too.
Although I feel sorry for both of us in landing on the wrong side of probability fraction, we should not let those destructive thoughts overcome us and unknowingly damage the upcoming versions of ourselves too.
Hope I made some sense, if not I'll come up with a blog post about this...
What I've found from my observation is that mostly a damaged person distorts the psychological state of others. And if you think your parents scarred you, just think about it for a second and ponder upon this question... Who scarred them and made them so insensitive?
This is a very good response and I wholeheartedly agree with what you are getting at. I actually don’t blame my parents, and for what I do blame them for I forgive them. But I see how they slot into the jig-saw puzzle of explaining the complexities of my family dynamics. I’m actively going through this investigative process at the moment and trying to see with clear eyes the true nature of so many past actions and words, and up to today really. They were simply continuing the chain, the domino effect of how their parents treated them and their parents before them and so on and so forth. I’ve done a fair amount of work with ayahuasca and during one of my sessions I travelled back to heal previous generations on my mum’s side, my mum, her parents, and back generations and generations, weeping for the pain and heart-ache that seeps the very soil in Northern Ireland. So much difficulty, poverty, resentment and grief. I don’t want to carry those parts forward any more, it’s a very bitter heritage many aspects of it.
It’s up to each individual whether or not they will continue their family chain of pathologies. It’s their own responsibility to be self-aware and decide what route they will take. If someone is a son of an abuser, are they destined to be abusive? Obviously not, some will make a point of not replicating their parent’s behaviour, others will slip into the perpetuating cycle, deluding themselves that they are different from their parent when all the while they become more and more like them. But sometimes to get to that point of conscious decision-making we need to rip the scab away to analyse and prod where we came from.
'''They were simply continuing the chain, the domino effect of how their parents treated them and their parents before them and so on and so forth.''' >>> Exactly. Disorder doesn't come out of nothing. It also follows the 'cause and effect' principle!
But like you said, there's a small window of timeframe where we have the free will to decide who we want to be and what traits we want to carry on...
The way you phrase it, Kate, your words replicate all of your feelings in someone else's heart too.
"'But sometimes to get to that point of conscious decision-making we need to rip the scab away to analyse and prod where we came from."'