How am I not myself?

"How am I not myself?" is a great line from one of my favorite movies: I Heart Huckabees ( https://www.google.com/search?q=i+heart+huckabees+movie ). It's an existential comedy about the various crises and deep questions most of us face sooner or later -- sometimes willingly, sometimes by having it thrust upon us. Because you are NOT your job, career, reputation, hobbies, abilities, accomplishments, failures, thoughts, opinions, emotions, or beliefs. So, what are you? Who are you? And most importantly: How are you not yourself? Think about it. The answers may surprise you.

In the meantime, just remember: crying is manly. 💪😭 #cryingismanly

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Transcript

THIS TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED by Descript:

Hi, thanks for tuning into episode two of the crying is manly podcast, where we talk about men's mental health with a focus on embracing vulnerability and living authentically.  So in this episode, I want to talk about actually one of my favorite movies of all time. It's called I Heart Huckabees.  The heart is the little emoji and it stars Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Jude law, Isabella Hooper, Naomi Watts, Jonah Hill, and others.

Yeah, the, the cast is just amazing. And it's a, what I would call, I guess you could call it an existential comedy. It's a little bit hard to explain. One of the most amazing things about this film though, is it's a different experience based on where you're at in life, because pretty much the whole movie revolves around. 

These really deep questions. And this really is various existential crises, depending on where you're at in life, it's going to feel different if that makes sense. So if you are currently in the breakup at three in the morning, eating the bucket of ice cream versus if you just started a business versus if you just finished college, like wherever you're at, it's, it might feel a lot different, especially if you're specifically in one of said crises.

One of my favorite scenes in this movie is there's a scene with Jude Law, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin. Where Jude Law says, how am I not myself? And he just says it off the cuff. They say, are you being yourself? And Jude Law says, how am I not myself? Like almost,  almost incredulously, flippantly,  not quite, but almost.

What do you mean? Of course I'm myself. Everyone's their self. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin just repeat it back to him.  And he starts to get more and more upset. No, but for real though, how am I not myself?  Like WTF guys, what's going on? They just repeat it. To him, and then they repeat it to each other.

And so you've got Dustin Hoffman and the late Tomlin just facing each other  saying emphatically, how am I not myself? So Jude law gets all frazzled and he stumbles out of the room and it's in a daze almost. And you hear Dustin Hoffman's voice saying, how am I not myself? And it's almost. That moment where the record keeps playing the same bit, like the same four seconds or whatever.

It's doing that. It's like a little loop of Dustin Hoffman saying that one of the things the movie does to is at the end of the credits, instead of a post credit scene,  there's just that phrase. So in just large font, how am I not myself? I just, I love this. I love this question. I love the sentence. I love the phrase.

I think especially  in modern society.  Slash Western society. I think there's so many ways in which we are not ourselves  and specifically just coming back around to the angle of this podcast itself.  There's  so many ways that we as men and boys,  whether implicitly or explicitly, it's communicated to us that maybe we shouldn't be ourselves or maybe a certain way to bring ourself to a situation.

Is the way it needs to be done. Oh, you need to do this if you want to be masculine. Or, since you're a man, you don't get to have an opinion on XYZ conversation. Or, obviously. Given the name of the podcast. Oh, it's not meant to cry. So if you are a crier, don't be yourself because that's, you can't be a man and you can't cry a lot.

Those are incongruent, incompatible. And again, specifically in Western culture. I've only lived in the US and Australia. I've traveled a bit, but I don't have a huge perspective on a bunch of different countries. But in the US, it's pretty common to start there. Okay.  various kinds of conversations and first impressions with, Oh, what do you do? 

And  I've always hated that question, man, since I was a kid. Cause it's such a narrow funnel and it's so backwards.  Like it's almost like it, it becomes even before, how are you?  Cause they haven't met you yet. Right. It's just, it's such an absurd way to  bridge that first connection. Because  if you want to talk about being yourself or not, like  Obviously, you are not your job.

Sorry to break it to you people who  that's part of their identity, but yeah, you're not your job. You're not your career. And in fact, we can expand that. You are not your reputation. You are not your hobbies.  You are not your abilities. You are not your accomplishments. You're certainly not your failures. 

But if you want to get a bit deeper on this, you are not your thoughts. You are not your opinions. You are not your emotions and you are not your beliefs.  Every single one of those things is malleable. Jobs change, reputations change, hobbies change, abilities change.  What you accomplish or fail at will obviously change.

And even our thoughts, opinions, emotions, and beliefs change. Those are all malleable. Plenty of people go through huge changes in those. So you're none of those things. You're not your job, your reputation, your hobbies, your abilities, your accomplishments, failures, thoughts, opinions, emotions, or beliefs. I'm sure there's 5, 10, 20 other we could add to that list. 

So  if you're not those things, what are you, who are you?  And I think some people tuning into this might be like, Whoa, that's pretty deep, bro. What are you doing? This is, I didn't sign up for this.  Fair enough.  I think just again, just coming back to the question, how am I not myself? If you just ask yourself that  you might be surprised and you might have some interesting answers clanging around in your head that we're just waiting for.

That kind of a question to be asked of them,  because of course, without getting too super philosophical or spiritual, of course, whatever you is, whatever you are,  whatever being a you is, that's not changing. Right? So whether you think of yourself as a consciousness or a soul or what have you, obviously, if somebody says. 

Is that yourself? You could say, sure. Yeah.  But how does yourself present to the world?  But really we don't even necessarily need to get that much into it. I think just focusing on the question is sufficient asking yourself, how am I not myself?  And whenever you take that question to me, and I think it's a very interesting question with interesting answers. 

You could process it as like a spiritual question. Am I not this body? Am I not this mind? Am I not this soul? Or you could approach it much more pragmatically again, being myself. Am I identifying too much?  With my job, am I never being myself? Are there parts of myself I'm hiding from everyone? Are there parts of myself I'm hiding from myself even?

This consciousness that's experiencing the things it experiences on a day to day basis, is it being the self it wants to be? What are the ways that it's  Going against what it wants to be and wants to do. What kinds of stories are you telling yourself that do not match  reality? And or do not match the truth about  who you are, or what you want, what you need? 

Stories are extremely important.  A lot of us tend to cling to either false stories,  or warped stories, or incomplete stories,  or stories that were more, sort of, a tool  to get us through something and they don't serve us anymore, but we're still clinging to them.  And just like, you're not your job. You're not your thoughts. 

You're not your emotions. You're also not your stories. You don't want to be this  just collection of  maybe correct. Maybe not stories.  It's just, it's wild. It's so interesting to me that especially in these days with social media, everything is so fast and so reactive and so  drained of nuance  and so focused on.

Online, at least, are focused on sarcasm and dunking and whataboutism and what's the latest thing to get upset about.  It's just, it's like nobody stops to think,  is this even what I want to be doing?  Am I even being true to myself? If what I am is a person who does these things, who does this mindless scrolling  of short video content for 7 hours straight, or  playing video games for 40, 000 hours, or whatever other thing, That's, that's  concerningly common now.

If that's what I'm doing, is that, is that really myself? Am I really being myself?  And if that's not myself, then  What is the real self that I  could be being  that's not those things? Cause  yeah, I got to break it to you. The internet's not real life. So I mentioned in the last episode, the amount of interesting and wonderful and surprising things that have happened since deciding to start this podcast. 

Cause it's only been about six weeks, give or take. Since I concretely made the decision to start it and started taking real measurable action towards doing so it's been just nuts. The amount of things that have happened since then. And 1 of my main takeaways, 1 of my main sort of through lines  during all of this has been,  man, the Internet is not real life.

I will probably do an episode on this soon. Maybe even just titled the Internet is not real life. Because it's wild, man. Every person I've talked to one on one,  either in person, or  on Zoom, or over the phone,  part of you is always, Oh no, what if they're  XYZ group that's not a good thing to be, or what if they're some kind of ism, whatever.

So, barring that, because I don't know everything about them, I can't, they just seem, they seem great. They seem like just  people. And  something that's been really interesting too is,  A few times it'll come up in conversation, like,  Oh, Hey, one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast is to  try to bring a different energy than these other things that are.

Unbeknownst to the men are harmful to men and boys for this, that, and the other reason I've had the person say, oh, what's that  this particular movement or podcast or forum or individual, whatever it is, it'll come up and they'll say, oh, what's that? I haven't heard of that.  And it just still has been blowing me away because if you hop online. 

Depending on what part of the internet you're on, it seems like everybody's  mad, and everybody's crazy, regardless of what side of which thing you're on. It just seems like everything is, everything is crazy, everything's nuts,  people are mad, nothing's gonna work, and blah, blah, blah.  Uh, but it's just, it's happening over and over again, these guys I've been meeting.

Some of them I'm just talking about like ideas for the podcast, some of them will end up being guests and that's why I talked to them. Some of them was just brainstorming various kind of people for various reasons, but it was fascinating how many times they hadn't heard of these really damaging things out there that  I just took as a given that kind of everyone knew about.

Because I've worked in social media. I'm online a lot. If you ask somebody who's on Twitter all the time,  Hey, what's the world like? And they said, Oh, this just trended and this, that, and the other. And I, this group is angry about this thing that happened yesterday. If, if they're on Twitter all the time and they don't really think about where they're getting their info, they might just assume that everyone knows the things that they just rattled off. 

But it's possible that it's a very small percentage of people saying  those things very loudly.  And if that's the only place you're looking at, it's Just seeing it there doesn't mean that's the only thing being said. Again, just to reiterate, the internet's not real life.  So just to wrap this up, first of all, I do encourage you to watch I Heart Huckabees.

It's a great film with a great cast  and it raises some really interesting questions.  But also I encourage you to  ask yourself that question, how am I not myself? If you're the journaling type, you could do it as a journal. I will admit that I Don't reflect on these kinds of things as often as I would like,  but I think it can be a very powerful question with interesting answers if you give yourself time and space to think on it.

And these days  where everything is so  tightly wound  and  so reactionary, I think  asking ourselves questions  Such as  how am I not myself  is  one of the many things we can do to slow down and try to combat  that a bit.  So until next time, yeah, let me know if there's a particular way you've been not being yourself or if there's a particular  thing you  have been feeling or wanting to  be or do  and you don't feel like you can let me know. 

And in the meantime, just remember crying is manly.