The Scientist

"Questions of Science,
Science and Progress,
Don't speak as loud as my heart." - Coldplay

I promised before that I'd return to this topic.

So here I am.

So what's the deal?

I was thinking about my previous comments, and feel I've maybe acquired some additional clarity via a related problem.

In addition to the other problem (my constant struggle with playing the fool and then resenting it when I have a chance to think quietly once I'm away from the limelight) there is another facet of my public persona that I have come to resent in recent years.

It's a habit that I thought I had mainly reigned in, or at least suppressed, as my 'self' filled out, but now, at the strangest times, I find it reappearing, making me doubt my ability to really be my self.

See, it's a social problem. When I speak with/around people whom I respect, or think highly of, or even just those who over time I've learned to think of as different than myself (no better, no worse), something happens. I begin to adopt their attributes. Facial Expressions, Turns of Phrase, Accents, Mannerisms. Everything.

It's like I become some sort of fucking social sponge, incapable of being myself except with those I feel a clear superiority to, either social, intellectual, physical, or all of the above.

What the fuck is that about?

It's bothered me for the last 5 years and sure, it's not as prevalent as it once was, but the fact that it's still there irks me.

Why can't I be myself? I feel like I'm some sort of Social Borg, incapable of not trying to assimilate and absorb every attribute of others that I have not yet made my own. As if I can somehow feed socially off their characters as people feed intellectually off each others thoughts.

It's odd. And I don't like it.

But there it is. It is appearantly as much a part of me as my eye colour, or my vocabulary.

The Scientist in me wants to subvert it. To conquer it and excise it completely from my system. The Warrior in me wants to confront those from whom I begin to model myself and prove to myself that I do not need to model them. The Dreamer in me just wants to know why I am so unhappy with my self that I must try to change.

Who wins? I don't think it matters. I think I still lose.

[Hindsight-o-Matic: I found out, after my Grandmother's death on New Years Day, 2005, that it is at least in part an inherited trait from her. She did this with accents throughout her life, and so perhaps it is merely my genes at work.]