Identity

I've been teaching my classes about Self & Identity - with specific regards to Jekyll & Hyde.
Apart from the many interesting discussions that have been generated, the prepartory work has forced me to confront a perenial problem - an issue that I've always struggled with and perhaps only in recent years become certain and assured. Even so, the certainty is never steadfast and immutable.

Who are we? Who am I? Who am I without the roles I play in life, without the facades, the appearances? Are we only animals who yearn for pleasure ... at the heart of it? That we construct social norms, rules and expectations to make ourselves believe that we are more than that? Being creatures of a higher order with the capacity for self-reflection and organised thought and behaviour we need to make ourselves believe we are more than who we really are - as nature would have it be?

Who am I? I know my identities but who is that self? Is there even an answer? Or are these identities part of who the self is that beyond creating identities, there is really nothing much? What about the soul? What is the soul? Is it our consciousness or must the sense of soul be quasi-religious?

Why do we fall in love when it hurts so much - especially when the lost love keeps returning to haunt one both literally and metaphorically? Isn't everything, finally, transient; all things pass ... even happiness? So what is there left? We make contacts, we love, and we leave ... friends, family, lovers alike. Someone once said that in life relationships are merely incidents in time in which we 'brush' against and with others. The paths meet, cross and divert again. Perhaps it is true.

I know that at the end of the journey, I will be alone. And it has always been so. This the condition of man ... "poor, nasty, brutish and short" ... as Hobbes would aptly phrase it.

I wonder ...

The emotional turmoil within becomes increasingly unbearable.