This morning I had no time for breakfast at home, so I decided to stop in a restaurant to buy something to eat. It was a known restaurant. A dialogue with an employee happened as follows:
Employee: "Hi! Long time no see, huh? How are you doing?"
Me: "Good, thank you! And you?"
E.: Good ... are you going to order the usual?
M: Yes ... (At this point he started preparing my breakfast burrito)
E.: Ok!
M.: With no meat ... (he interrupted me abruptly and a little bit mad)
E.: ... and no chili. I know you, you know? You don't need to tell me how your burrito is. I know you.
M.: I'm sorry. Ok, then!
E.: You know ... there are many people coming here everyday, but even if you spend many time don't showing up, I am still knowing how to prepare your sandwich ... no meat, no chili with some vegetables in it. Pickles, olives and tomatoes. I know you.
M: Exactly! I am happy that you know!
E.: Try to come here more often. Take care!
I left and immediately started thinking about what
"I know you" really means. How can one just define other as
"the girl that doesn't eat meat or chili, and instead asks for olives, pickles and tomatoes" and that is it? It is everything that that guy know about me. Of course he knows my name and where I came from, but knowing me? Or he just know exactly who I am in that context. Deeply shallow.
However this kind of thing matches perfectly with my idea of recognition of identity, what identity really means? I don't think we are truly able to define ourselves properly. At least I am always struggling when trying to define myself. Who am I? The way I express my identity to my parents is different from how it is expressed to my sister, or to my friends, colleagues, ... And it is expressed accordingly to each third person. One can know me in a way that other couldn't expect. Am I pretending? Course not. I think the identity splits apart to fit any situation. Or maybe it is exactly the opposite. It is not about what our identity is, it is about what it is not. For example a message written to someone. The author know EXACTLY what he/she are saying. The receiver will understand it accordingly to his/her knowledge. It can or cannot matches to the author's idea. The message will be given, but how about the real meaning? The intention and all related to it.
I understood identity in the same way. Although I do believe that we are not able to define ourselves properly, we know the message we are saying, at least consciously. The way people will understand it can or cannot match at all. Perhaps the philosopher G. Simmel and his idea about what is "I" and what is "Not-I" defines it better than me (Of course he does!). By the other hand, it is obvious that I do the same thing. The way I understand a person, doesn't necessarily matches to the reality!
Since the moment I started thinking about it (some moment in between my teens years) I used to illustrate it with a poem by Mario de Sa-Carneiro, a Portuguese poetry. I won't be able to translate it properly but, below the Portuguese version I wrote the free translation of it. You can get the idea.
"Eu não sou eu nem sou o outro,
Sou qualquer coisa de intermédio:
Pilar da ponte de tédio
Que vai de mim para o Outro."
(I am not me, nor the other
I am something in between:
Boredom bridge's pillar
That goes from me to the other)
Identity. It is what it is. Or not ...
