Personality and Self

August 3, 2026

Last summer, I found myself continually referring back to the Zhuangzi, or Chuang Tzu — no matter what I chose to write about, I seemed to find passages and ideas from that work that helped me reach the point I was trying to make. While the life of a scholar has a certain aesthetic appeal for me, I’m far from being one myself; thus, my interactions with these works take the form of idle conversations. Zhuangzi tells me something, and I try to say something back. Sometimes, my response is concerned with figuring out what the hell he was talking about; other times, I am trying to apply his images and dialogues to the problems of my own life. If we’re being honest with ourselves, 2300 years is not a very long time. What Zhuangzi wants to say about life still applies.

This year, I have turned to the Wumenguan (Mumonkan), also known as the Gateless Barrier. In this work, the master Wumen collects Zen koans and provides a short commentary for each, including a short poem. In the edition I have, these are translated by an American, Robert Aitken — an interesting fellow who seems to have spent most of his life in Hawaii — who then provides his own commentary, attempting to bridge the cultural gap and provide lay learners a jumping-off point for contemplating the koans themselves. In this he does a commendable job. I will admit that the hippy generation has given American Zen Buddhism something of a bad name, so I went in with trepidation, but have found Aitken to be an amicable companion in my studies.

The fact that I am continually drawn to such works reveals a simple fact: I am trying to figure something out. Further, what I am trying to figure out is something that other people already know — this is why I believe that I can find it in books. I try not to use hackneyed expressions, so I won’t say I’m searching for “inner peace,” “contentment,” or even “enlightenment.” Instead, I will say that I want to feel a little better when being in the world. I have yet to find an alternative to being in the world, so it ends up being how I spend all of my time. This being the case, I would like it to be slightly more pleasant.

I don’t like to think of myself as a project. I wouldn’t like to be “the best version of myself.” There is truly only one version of myself, and it’s the one here right now. I’ve made certain choices and acted in certain ways. I continue to make certain choices and act in certain ways! Put this all together, and we have some sort of notion of my personality. If we would like some sort of notion of my self-hood, then we would have to include a vast inner world of thought which only I have access to — so what would be the point? You guys don’t have to know about any of that. For you, it is enough for me to be a personality. Reciprocally, we can come to the conclusion that it’s enough for me to know my self — I don’t have to worry too much about my personality. This is a freeing idea, because I find one of the worst parts about being in the world is having to reckon with the fact that I have a personality that exists for others: trying to understand it, trying to control it, trying to change it, etc.

My cats don’t put any effort into expressing their personality. It just happens. I can tell Mars like straws because he’s always pulling them out of my drinks. I can tell Maya is timid because she runs away from things. So I have been trying recently to not try to express my personality, but just act whatever way I think I should act, and letting my personality express itself. This sounds easy enough, but the problem of course is that I’m just as likely to express aspects of my personality that I dislike as those I like. I will show fear, nervousness, and timidity. I will be annoying and rub people the wrong way. I will express my inner thoughts as truly as possible and still be thought of as “putting on airs.” This is all deeply troubling. I am looking at my self and trying to deduce a personality; others are seeing my personality and trying to deduce a self. Both of these are impossible. In this lies the fundamental divide that makes social life so painful.

Understanding all this is one thing. Well, maybe it’s two or three things. Regardless, it’s not the whole story. The trouble is taking all this and going out in the world and accepting that it is all the way it is, without getting upset. I want to be perceived a certain way! I want it so badly. I often feel that if I could only be perceived the way I’d like to be perceived, there would be no problems in my life. I would just be fine.

Because of all this fear and desire, sometimes I don’t want to be perceived at all. I think it would be best to hide myself away where no one could see me. But I never find that this helps — it’s nice for an hour or two to lay in bed with the doors and curtains closed, but after a while, I want to go out in the world again. I want to share the world with you. It’s painful — but everything’s painful.

Living an ascetic and monk-ish life is also painful. Of course, at times it is peaceful and serene, but at other times it is dull and tormentuous. I think at a young age I was caught up in the ideal image of the ascetic, and I didn’t take into account that they are only attempting to transcend their humanity — they’re not actually doing it. When an ascetic sits in an uncomfortable way for a long time, it still hurts — he just tries not to mind that it hurts. I’m sure he gains something from the experience, but it’s not what any of us would call happiness. They feel the need to do that sort of thing — in the same way that CEOs feel the need to make their lives miserable with material wealth and constant doing. We all feel the need to live in some certain way — well, then why don’t we just go ahead and do it? Sometimes it’s nice and sometimes it hurts — but we don’t really have a choice, do we?

Too many of my dreams are based on being a different guy. Or rather I could say that I take my dreams about being a different guy too seriously. It’s okay to dream about being a different guy; dreams, after all, are emanations of our imagination. It wouldn’t do to imagine what we already have, or who we already are. But too often I emerge from such a dream wishing I had taken a different path, or feeling I need to drop everything in a mad scramble to become that other person. I get confused and bewildered, run this way and that for a few days, then eventually settle down and realize: I liked what I was doing already. Why not keep at it?

There’s already all sorts of other people out there. I don’t have to be any of them; they’ve got it taken care of. Meanwhile, no one else is being who I am. Some people might be getting fairly close, but it’s always true that the more similar two things are, the more striking their differences become. Imagine there’s another guy out there writing this same essay, but he decided to choose between the words “confused” and “bewildered” in the previous paragraph, instead of redundantly using them both. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Imagine if we met. I’d probably lop his head off with a battle-axe.