What if we were narratives instead of personalities?
Instead of "this is my personality," we could say "these are the stories I am." Or "these are the stories we are, the inherited, the forgotten and the lived."
What if, instead of being a certain personality, we assumed that we were several stories, multiple narratives, changing and seasonal, each with its own tone and rhythm?
Instead of "this is my personality," we could say "these are the stories I am."
Or "these are the stories we are, the inherited, the forgotten and the lived."
The word personality comes directly from the medieval Latin personalitatem. The meaning of "a distinctive essential character of a self-conscious being" is recorded in 1795, from the French personnalité. The meaning of "a person whose character stands out from that of others" dates from 1889. While the cult of personality, "devotion to a leader encouraged based on aspects of his personality rather than ideological or political considerations" was attested to in 1956.
Before moving on, I want to note the context and traits of the Western view of personality, such as: supreme fulfillment (transcendence), absolute affirmation of everything (absolutism), universal conditions of existence (universalism), and the greatest possible freedom of self-determination (Western individualism). These concepts inevitably echo Western forms of discourse and thought. I’ve discussed these addictions of the global north's way of seeing and being in the world — transcendence, absolutism, universalism and individualism — in various articles, classes and books. I want to note that the residues and 'nuances' of these concepts underlying the idea of personhood tend to create crystallized expectations of purity, often ignoring movement, thresholds, hybridism and the inevitable impermanence, the immanent movement of "becoming with."
Naturally, personality comes from person, which comes directly from the Latin persona "human being, person, character; a role in a drama, an assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," made of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by actors. It may be related to the Latin personare "to sound through," the mask as something to speak through that amplifies the voice, but also possibly borrowed from the Etruscan phersu "mask." The meanings "the physical being of someone, the living body" and "external appearance" are from the late 14th century; in person, "by physical presence" is from the 1560s.
Person, after all, comes from mask, and personality is like the mask we wear.
However, we have to unravel the deeper meaning of mask. I adapt what I wrote about masks in the book "A Happy Place": "Since ancient times, masks have been used in sacred processes of connection and transmutation by shamans to connect with the world of spirits. Masks allow us to transmute and modify reality, as they are bridges to archetypes and can represent embodied symbolic materialization. So much so that many contextual cultures use the mask's power in ceremonies and invocation and incorporation rituals. But nowadays, masks are seen as something negative, which makes it seem as if we have been robbed of the ability to transmute and experience, as they have come to be seen as something that contains or hides things."
And what is personality, if not the incorporation and suppression of the multitude of expressive and responsive traits we carry?
After all, we can wear different masks that open us up to different versions of ourselves, because we’ve never been just one thing; we have never carried just one story. Each mask is a character in the multiple stories in which we participate. Like the shedding of fur, skin or feathers, we keep unfolding.
Let's also not forget the mask, worn by Greco-Roman actors, through which we sound and which amplifies our voice, as the root of the word person indicates. So, just like an actor who changes his mask depending on the story and character he embodies, we too can change, complement and transform the multiple masks and stories that make us up. We adapt to different contexts, activating different parts of ourselves in a flow of acceptance and fusion with the environment.
By opening ourselves up, not to one personality, but to the various stories, the multiple, changing and seasonal narratives that make us up, we accept the inevitable connection with porosity and transformation, allowing ourselves to be an unfinished product, a verb, and movement in metamorphosis.
Instead of "This is my personality," we could say, "These are the stories I am," "These are the stories we are, the inherited, the forgotten and the lived."
All etymology information in this article comes from https://www.etymonline.com/
This article was translated from:
BATALHA, Sofia. E se fossemos narrativas em vez de personalidades? Serpente da Lua, https://serpentedalua.com/e-se-fossemos-narrativas-em-vez-de-personalidades/, 2023