The 'Real Me'

You sometimes hear people saying that you don't know the real them. It happens online and offline..

What really constitutes the 'real me' so to speak?

Perhaps some people are actors... but when I'm here, you may not know everything about me but it doesn't mean I'm any less of the real me. Where does the 'real me' begin? Should you know every single detail of my life? In which case the only person who could know the real me is me, which makes the very comment to others about not knowing the real me rather unfair.

What do you think?

I think no one ever knows fully the real you or the real me. We see parts of who people are, and based on those parts many people make assumptions on who you are. (You in the sense of me, you, anyone)
You can live with someone for years and never truly know them.
What you choose to share isn't a lie, or any less who you are, it's just a slice of you and your life.
Reminds me of the Tao in that you aren't just a name, you are so much more but in order to understand or know who we are talking about we use Edan, or Elizabeth.
The comment itself is unfair and usually used when you act in ways that people don't expect going of what little they do know of you based on what you say or do here, if its used online. It's there expectations that cause them to feel your not being who you really are. There problem, not yours.
As long as you are true to who you are in all dealings I wouldn't worry what others think or say. It's a reflection of them not you.

It's a good topic ...

To be honest, I'm only discovering the 'real me' as Life goes on. Those discoveries change ...

The 'real me' also depends on the combinations that arise and abate in the environment -- including, perhaps especially, the social environment.

There are characteristics which remain relatively stable, but that 'real me' that is supposed to be so presentable -- well, I don't think that's what is my identity card and CV are about.

I'm 'me', to be sure ... but 'real' is a pretty flimsy adjective to be throwing about there.

Who is the "real" you? Is it your ego? Is that real? Can you describe yourself, otherwise?

My two cents

Personaly i do not care so much to be real me, (i do not really know my real me), and i care instead to be solid in that what i am doing.
My humble opinion is that the real me of any person is not hidden in the personal details but in that what defines every person:
for example. If John Macdo (just a random name) likes trains, the real me of John Macdo is not the name but the fact that he likes trains.

Personaly i guess the closest thing to my real me is my poker face. Solid as stone and cold as ice.

I don't know about anybody else, but when I tell someone they don't know the real me, I'm referring to who I am as a full person. Sometimes I feel like people might get a certain image of me from what I say here, but they don't see me when I'm performing my duties as a manager, or as a student, etc. While what I say here is authentic and it's just as much a part of me as these other aspects, the fact that you only get a glimpse of who I am limits the possibilities of what kind of image you have of me. In some ways though, that may be the only image you ever get of me and that's kind of sad, but it is what it is.

I'm afraid my bad jokes are present wherever you see me though. :silly:

I have been in these communities since the early 2000s and have been getting to know myself for 34 years.

If I dont have some conception of the real me, I am a moron.

If those online dont know the real me, I have wasted alot of time online.

When people say "You dont know me" , or something along those lines, especially online, within the subject matter discussed in these forums, subjects that are very close to our hearts one would think, then I can only imagine that wasting more time with that person again, makes me a moron, because they are either a liar in the sense of not being honest an sincere in our interactions, or they are a liar in the sense that they are scared to admit that perhaps people do know them.

Both of which leaves me with the conclusion that it is more important to you to hide behind a wall then communicate.

That we know another person only partially does not also mean that what we know is inaccurate. Understanding our own motivations and intentions is a kind of knowledge, but the primary purpose of this insight is that we might then act in such a way that our choices express what we value.

Sometimes others might experience us in ways that we are not fully aware of.
Does then the other's experience of us get included into the totality of who we are?
Is our experience of ourselves of a different quality that our experiences of other things?
Are we another thing that we can learn to know?

We might hear someone say that that action or statement of another person is not really who they are - that 'deep down' they are really someone else; that that action or statement is not representative of who they really are. Because I reject the false dichotomy between appearance and reality that is assumed in such a statement, I reject also the idea that each of us possess a personal essence. That there is a self or a soul beneath it all is an illusion. We are our actions. There is nothing else that exemplifies who we really are. If there is a 'real me' then it is my choices and my actions.

I tend to see it similarly to Jamie...

When I say "you don't know the real me", I really mean "you don't know the whole me".

Everything that one projects about themselves is 'real', even when acting in a way that feels out of character. By which I mean acting in a way that is not in keeping with one's usual behaviour patterns, as to say 'out of character' is to imply that one can detach themselves from their true character - their real self - which I don't believe to be the case.

Some people choose to put up walls and consider all aspects of their real self 'hidden', but that cold emotionless front that they outwardly project...it's still part of them.

It's personal perception I guess...whether in this context the word 'real' is synonymous with 'whole' - I go through life with a firm feeling that no-one knows the real me, but equally I accept that those parts of myself that I do allow people to see are still 'real' in and of themselves - they just aren't the full picture.

We humans often don't like to think than anyone else has full access to our 'real' selves...I think very few of us could say that we willingly reveal every single aspect of ourselves to others. Even to our loved ones. The 'real me' can be such an incredibly personal concept that we are generally extremely reluctant to put all of our cards on the table...

(Since I'm a newcomer here, I'd like to share a little background information on myself whilst I delve into my response!)

I have been studying social and evolutionary psychology (along with environmental science) for the last three years, and this is one of the topics which most fascinates me. The literature makes it abundantly clear that a "real me" or "real self" is nothing more than an extremely powerful illusion. The nature of science, however, makes it quite difficult to go beyond this statement at this point in time, but any who have studied even a smidgen of Eastern philosophy have seen that Eastern philosophers have understood the illusory nature of "self" for over two thousand years.

Unlike nearly all other fields of psychology, social psychology emphasizes the power that the situation has on the individual or group of individuals. Where a behavioral psychologist may try to determine why one behaves the way that they do based on personality inventories (like the MMPI) and the like, a social psychologist will try to determine individual and/or group behavior based on the dynamics of the situation and environment. By definition, any one human is not a single, lone island entirely separate of its environment. Alan Watts states very much the same thing (and much more) in the The Book.

No human being is one "self" or one "personality" all the time at least with regard to modern Western society. At the most basic level, nearly all of us exhibit different personalities / selves in public and in private. We are not the "same" at work as we are at a party. We have a tendency to act differently and exhibit different personalities with members of the opposite sex, with perceived authority figures, with people we perceive to have higher or lesser intellects than our own, with a person wearing a suit in contrast to the same or other person when wearing a sweatshirt and pants, with a friend in contrast to a stranger, with a long-term partner in contrast with a new partner, etc. (This also highlights a significant problem with the nature of psychology research given that to study one's personality, you virtually always remove them from the environment(s) in which they exhibit them into a sterile lab setting, but that is for another day!)

To sum up, telling someone in person, "I wish you could know the 'real' me," is nothing more than a self-defense mechanism (of which there are a multitude). It is quite impossible to know the exact nature of oneself when you consider that your self changes over time (evolves) and varies from situation to situation. Most people do have some type of way in which they define their 'self,' and this definition is virtually always a list of past accomplishments, current actions, future plans, and religious/spiritual beliefs of which they are proud and/or are deemed "good" or "just" relative to the society to which you and/or they belong. Pride being, of course, the most powerful emotion used in defense of self.

To give a recent example from my own life, I went on a coffee date with someone I had met only briefly a week or so before we met for the date. After conversing for 20 minutes or so on the regular topics like education, work, family, etc., she asked me this question verbatim:

"So, what are you like?"

I nearly spit out my tea (Yes, I'm "that guy" in Seattle who doesn't drink coffee! ). I responded, "What am I like? Like, who am I? What do I do? What do I believe? I mean that question is slightly loaded. I mean do you want to know if I'm introverted or extroverted, or if I'm religious, etc.? I don't really know how to respond to that!"

In the end, however, we both defined ourselves in terms of the aforementioned list of prideful actions as that's how we all relate to each other in the West: "I define myself in contrast to you." Whilst in college, she had a prestigious music internship. I had a promising baseball career that was cut short by injury. She wants to work for a new marketing firm that was extremely difficult to get a job with. I want to get into a Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. Back and forth, back and forth.

Where is the 'real' self here? Is there one? Am I simply the sum of my past actions and future plans? Am I another "genuine fake" as Alan Watts would put it?

Who, exactly, am I? Who are you?

[Apologies for the length. Hope this helps!]

- Everett