Who are we?

A cliche question if ever there was one. Unfortunately, it's one of those cliches that loses none of its potency just because it is a cliche. Any person even mildly inclined towards reflection inevitably has to bow their head to this paterfamilias of internal questions. Thusly, I find myself at its familiar threshold, as, even with my storied propensity towards reflection, the question remains quite relevant.

I have decided that who we are is largely who we are perceived to be. Yes, there is an internal you, somewhere deep down, which has been hardened over time into a consistency tenacious enough to endure the outside pressures it is subject to. But surely this is only a core, a small, but weighty portion. The large majority of who we are depends on the context of each moment. Who are we talking to? How do we feel at the time? How is that person responding?

Along these lines, I have thought out three universal truths for how we are perceived and how we perceive others. In written form, they can be described as the following:

We are what we do

We reflect what we say

We project what we think

Shape wise, these would form a pyramid, with the item with the largest frequency, what we think, forming the base, and the smallest section, what we do, forming the tip. This reflects the frequency of our reality: i.e. we think things way more than we do things. Much like in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, however, the size of the sections are disproportional to their significance. In terms of importance, we can think of it as a pyramid that is partially buried. It is the top most section, our actions, which are most readily discerned by those on the surface, followed by the second section, what we say, and ending with what we think.

This is, I believe, how we ultimately form opinions of others, and why that other great cliche, "actions speak louder than words," seems to ring so true. Given time to get to know someone, it is possible to slowly excavate their pyramid, to reveal more and more of why they say what they say, or to understand more clearly what they think given a situation. The one thing that is visible at all times, however, is what we do.