THAT'S MEN:Life is a set of assumptions about who we are, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
HE WAS what you might call an ebullient man: life and soul of the party, strong opinions, talked more than anyone else at meetings, hail fellow well met.
When I attended an event with him with his wife, it was the same: he got the first round, applauded the acts loudly, and barked importantly into his mobile phone.
His colleagues fell into two camps in their reaction. Some were believers in Shakespeare’s line that “all the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players” and they left him to his theatricals unless he threatened their interests directly, when they fought back.
The less philosophical, who took everything seriously, fought back all the time, conniving and conspiring, sometimes winning and usually losing.
Long after I stopped working with him I came across the concept of “I-making”. It’s a tricky concept but it goes like this: as we go through childhood and adulthood (though childhood is the more important) we accumulate assumptions about who we are.
These can be positive or negative: I’m timid or I’m courageous, I’m conservative or I’m a socialist, I’m an intellectual or I’m out for a good time, I’m a golden boy or I’m a waste of space.
All these accumulated ideas constitute the “self” with which we identify. We go through life protecting that self through living it out. Some of us do it – and this is certainly my way – by putting up smokescreens so that people cannot see or threaten the carefully guarded self.
Others, like my colleague, “act out” the self. He has to be certain of his views, he has to batter other people into submission, has to be top dog.
Another example: Do you see yourself as an intellectual? Do you resist the temptation to go see that movie about the disreputable teddy bear? Would you prefer the latest open-air edition of The Tempest? That, you see, preserves the “intellectual” side of yourself.
On the other hand, if The Irish Times or Arena (the arts show on RTÉ radio) like Ted, it would be okay to go to it because then it would be fun even for an intellectual (yes, I’m talking about myself).
Think of a soap opera. Think of how consistent the characters are. Every now and then the storyline explodes because a character seems to be acting out of, well, character by having an affair, getting involved in crime or developing an addiction. But they always fall back into their old selves. They must be consistent or they cannot credibly exist.
And we are just like that. We defend who we have become even if who we have become doesn’t bring us a lot of peace and joy.
Is there any hope? Not in dramatic change. For most of us, a Paul-like road to Damascus, in which everything changes utterly and for the better, is not an option. Sudden change could amount to what used to be called a nervous breakdown and leave us stranded. Apart from born-again Christians I’m not sure anyone can make that sudden, total change successfully and I don’t want to be one of those – because then I wouldn’t be me.
But I try to accept myself as I am and that includes accepting those aspects of me that don’t really fit with who I think I ought to be – cowardice and conceit for instance – by just acknowledging that they are there as permanent fixtures and going about my business.
Oddly, that acceptance has brought about some change at the margins and that change has been enough to improve my experience of life as me.
As for my ebullient colleague, I spotted him in a bank after he retired, giving what-for to some hapless junior who had resolutely screwed a look made up of deference, respect and exasperation onto her face.
I know what he’d think, and say, about all this stuff about acceptance.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind, mindfulness in daily living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email