Our Day's Errand

Dramaturgy.  Impression Management.  The self we present to the world verses our true self; the self we are when we are alone and no one is there to judge.   Erving Goffman wrote about it in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.   Goffman's concepts and framework of social interaction, known as the dramaturigical model of social life, are on point and and well articulated, but I ask myself Why?  Why do we, why do I, feel a need to present myself in a different light to different people at different times?  At work, at home, with my friends, with my family; always the chameleon.  How do I rectify this seemingly innate need to role play with a modicum of self honesty? Or is it all true and there is no self-negotiation?  Sometimes the former, other times the latter.  And in the end does any of it even matter?  Perhaps the answer is, I just am.

I can posit Earth travels around the sun every twenty-four hours, but it is also axiomatic that no two twenty-four hour periods are parallel, no two experiences identical; each one singularly defined by the experiences we have and people we meet.   And those encounters affect, transform, and become us - the collective whole.

What do I choose to see?  What do I choose to believe?

Envisage a world that enchants and time is dilated by our sensitivity to the human and planetary condition; a reality in which humanities greatest attributes of compassion, loving-kindness, and love surmount being "right," being powerful, or making money at the expense of or on the backs of others;  everyone has what they need, suffering remains only a self-induced Buddhist mentality, and words such as trite, mundane, and commonplace do not exist.  Conceive giving more of ourselves than we ask for or take and understanding supersedes being understood.  Idyllic, even naive perhaps, but is it not worth striving for?  To close out each day knowing that the world might be a little bit better because that was our day's errand?

I don't know where I am going with all of this, and maybe I don't have to.  I was recently reminded that a writer writes first and foremost for themselves; to straighten out thoughts in their own mind.  And perhaps that is all I am doing; trying to find my place in the world where my contribution to the greater whole highlights the goodness that surrounds us each and every day, all the time, should we be awake enough to see it.

School Children in Malawi, Africa