#020 ✰ Me, myself and... my other self
Today, Kev's writing!
Good day to you!
I hope this piece of us finds you in great shape.
Today I am handing over our thoughts section to Kev - he had things to say and well we’re a team you know :) Enjoy reading!
Hey there! I'm kev and if that doesn't ring any bell, you can quickly scan that presentation post; if you scroll down to the bottom, I'm the guy on the right side with the cycling hat. Anyway, I felt inspired and wanted to share with you few thoughts I had recently.
As a reminder 👉 we're here to bring people peace with their possessions. Try the beta!
Out
A Ferrari, I'm buyin' three
A closet of Saint Laurent, get what I want when I want
'Cause this hunger is drivin' me, yeah
I just need to be alone, I just need to be at home
It stroke me the other day how we tend to talk about ourselves as a fixed personality, answering the question 'who am I' with some intangible unchanging characteristics like I'm XYZ, no matter the context. While it might be true for some of us (hopefully) it's largely untrue for most. Like if I hear something like 'kev, sure, the guy who's always wearing fancy colorful pants' hmmm actually, I haven't put on anything else than a grey jogger for few months (who said comfort as #1 priority at home?).
And then I wondered: why am I wearing this for 6 months during lockdown while I was so happy to put on that flowery pant when I was spending my days outside. Or if I put it in a different way: why exactly do I wear such flowery pants sometimes? Is it really because my self is liking this design / this specific pant way more than the others or... or what exactly... to show off - to be 'seen' - to literally 'say something to the outside world'?
We frequently feel we have our self, and then, our social self. And even though we don't always realize it for ourself, we more easily spot it on others. Like that friend you think you know perfectly and then, when surrounded by other people, starts to act very differently.
Well, if I dive one step deeper, we may have tons of different social selves depending on the context and the social group itself. That being said, I also forgot how impactful & influential these other 'me' are. They're not fake, they're not bad, wrong or anything, they're just me. And 'them' + the few 'me' while alone at home = the whole me. Quarantine sort of highlighted this and I now see tons of examples all around.
That tweet - and the endless replies - shows off the same thing to me. We all built our closet based on the social groups we were interacting with daily and all of sudden - if the only other person we see is ourself in the mirror and the few people we share a flat with - we picked up totally different clothes and - surprisingly for some of us - the same, most of the time haha.
Now, it's not only about clothes, obviously. I proudly shout out few months ago that I finally nailed down a pace regarding my meat consumption and that I was consequently 95%+ vegetarian (yep, shameless attempt to link my own personal blog). Well, September hasn't been the same at all.
What did happen during that month? Ciao home, we went back to France to spend time with family and friends after lockdown. All of sudden, saying no to countless meat spread out over the table wasn't the same story. I could have said no obviously, I said no few times, but it was somehow too much on me to say no all the time (and consequently not eat what I got served as well). And when I think more about it, I wouldn't blame the temptation itself - even though it definitely plays a role; especially for wine / alcohol and cheese in my case - it was also a question of: which kev do I wanna play here right now exactly? Not intentionally of course, it was more biased than that, more subtle, but still played a role. Would I steal the attention for a while to answer the questions to tell everyone why I decided to decrease dramatically my meat consumption? It didn't feel right. Or at least, I made another choice.
Now, I realize how everything is a question of balance. If I look for peace, I actually look for my own equilibrium, whatever that means for myself at home or my other self surrounded by family, friends, people.
I want to understand my(whole)self more. It will impact everything - including my own relationship to physical possessions. And I can't wait to become a better version of myself.
In
Documentary
The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis [2002]. This isn’t Netflix brand new documentary. Yet. Yet this is a must watch. This sentence by Curtis himself sums it all “Although we feel we are free, in reality, we have become the slaves of our own desires".
=> Digging deeper inside these 4 episodes in a coming newsletter, that’s for sure.
Have a beautiful day and weekend! 🌳
Mathilde, Kev and Max
