"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Oscar Wilde
The search for self is central to the human condition. Selfhood is our first great struggle in life. Differentiation. "Who am I?" "Why am I?" I am not just an extension of my mother and/or my father. Okay, well, after potty training, the struggle to establish an independent identity, to become "me," is our first great obstacle in life. Some people, perhaps most people, as Oscar Wilde says, never become "I;" they remain, in some form or another, "we" and "us."
Actually, that's a true thing that most people never really become themselves, but we'll get to that and the research around it later in this series. However, it is that thing, that thing where people are mostly other people that has always struck me about the Bible's use of the term "sheep" in its description of humanity. But I digress...
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To find out what I digress from, you'll have to follow the herd right over to Indie Writers Monthly. You know you don't want to be left out, so head on over.
Yeah, yeah, I'm headed over.
ReplyDeleteLater, I promise
ReplyDeleteBasing characters on people you know seems only sensible to me. They are, after all, our database.
ReplyDeleteCrystal: I saw you there.
ReplyDeleteJo: I'll hold you to it.
TAS: That's very true. And there's a quote tickling my mind related to that, but I can't bring it to the surface. :(
I remember that Oscar quote. He's one of my favourite writers of all time.
ReplyDeleteEva: I haven't read a lot of Wilde. Some day, though. Maybe.
ReplyDelete