Duplicity, thy name is (insert your name here)

Is there a private you, a you revealed when you are with your partner, a workplace you, a parental you (if you have kids), a you when you are with close friends, a you for when you are with acquaintances?  Does this ever lead to feeling like the “real” you should speak up?  Would you recognise the “real” you in a crowded room?  I often wonder if I would.

I have become so overwhelmed with the sheer number of versions of me that I sometimes wonder if I’m losing my mind!  Am I a fraud?  Am I discrete and measured in my dealings with people, based on their needs [as I see them]?  Maybe I am a tumble weed, rolling rootless with whatever wind that blows.  I talk about God with my “God friends”, cars with my “car friends”, work with work mates – you get the idea.  Somehow though, like a pilot light in a great furnace, burns my need to talk about the gospel.  Unfortunately, standing by,  fire-hose, axe and extinguisher at the ready is my ever present desire to be liked.  The constant antithesis of the me that likes to talk about grace, hope, love.

It may be that I’m the only one that feels like this.  Perhaps the “(insert your name here)” part in the title of this post is a bit presumptuous of me?  No matter.  I think I have the makings of a recipe to console myself, and it surprisingly contains no alcohol.  I am going to establish a “baseline me”; this will be the me that I will use as the point of reference for my other flavours.  How?  By finding the common bits in each version and bringing them together to form a mirror I can see myself in.

Hmm, very deep today…