As posted in My Simple Thought

Do you believe that all of us have many ‘persona‘ (literally means masks in psychology) within ourselves? I’m not talking about many types of personality or theories, you may find it in other site like Wikipedia. The discussion is more about our role in society and how these role might affect each other.

The simplest form of this persona can be found in our own family life. I believe each of us would have at least two roles in the family. Here’s the list as a child of our parent, a brother or sister, a parent for the children, grandparent for grandchildren, husband for the wife, and the list can go on and put as a new posting.  Take example of this pair, as a child and a brother. As a child, we are oblige to follow the family rule set up by our parent. In this role, you have to think your parent’s point of view when they told you to do something or not. Even when it seems not logical for us. If you were told by your parent to have your dinner now because the dishes need to be washed, don’t you think it’s not a correct reason of why we should have our dinner now? It’d be more appropriate if we should have our dinner now because it’s already dining time, the whole family member has gathered in table, and the food would get cold very soon. At this point, you have to remember your role as a child. If at the same time you told to have dinner you’re watching a movie with your brother, then you also have to remember your role a brother. You may told your brother to paused the movie for a while and have a dinner together. In most case, these different roles in a family were done subconsciously.

Not enough with the complexity in these several roles, we also engaged in many more different roles in society. Workplace, relationship, organization, communities, and many more demand us to play each role appropriately. Often, two or three roles must have done simultaneously. A strict boss in the office may have play his role as nice and caring boyfriend to his love girlfriend. A humble subordinate, will have to make an important decision on her family matter. And maybe, these two different person have the same role as member of web communities. To sum up till this part of writing, we already have at least five personas at the same time (two roles in the family, two roles in society, another one is our own choice of role).

In this modern civilization when we face many personas only in one person, it’s very relevant that we might lose our own identity. Who am I really? What am I doing here? Who are you? Am I doing the right thing? These are the questions that based on our quest in searching our own identity. Seeing this great opportunity, many of companies create another chance for someone to choose their own role that they like. The famous Hollywood and video games company are only a few. Second Life even provide us a near complete and complex society in the virtual world. You can be what you’re dream of in this ‘world’, making it for us to even harder to distinguish not only our roles but also the different between reality and fantasy.

However, we have had our chance to have only one persona, it was when you were born in this world. Your parents might see you as a child and you must act accordingly as they expected. The baby-sitter may treat you just like another baby who’ll pay for they paycheck. Doctors and nurses will treat you as patient in their hospital. Regardless of how they see your role in their life, you care for the only role that you know… “I’m a new guy in this world! Treat me with care!” Do you ever miss that wonderful moment?

To close this writing, that’s why I believe religions will never perish in this world. They provide the very basic human need, a purpose of life. Purpose Driven Life, the most international best seller of non-fiction book category written by Rick Warren is a living proof for this. And this “Over 30 millions copies sold worldwide” book is nothing compared with the most popular book of all time, The Bible (sold by over 6 billions copies - soyouwanna.com). In my own personal opinion, I believe that no matter roles you have and engage right now, it all have only one purpose… and it is the purpose defined by our own Creator.

How many ‘me’ do we have? My answer is one.