> The passage you shared is beautiful, but it's not quite registering how the essay evoked it for you. Can you say more?

One thing I take away from the excerpt is that the person we present and feel ourselves as during interactions with others is not exactly the same as the person we are alone. There isn't necessarily an element of deceit to this. Instead, we should pay attention to both selves -- and to me much of your essay is about paying attention to the person we are when we're alone, and being aware of differences between the two selves, without necessarily needing to reconcile them.

We are like a beam of light which changes depending on the lens through which we project ourselves. The final form changes based on the situation (lens).

I think I would say we project different aspects of ourselves into lower dimensions (thoughts and words) depending on the transformation function (context into which we are projecting ourselves).

You get a twofer of analogies today!

> I think I would say we project different aspects of ourselves into lower dimensions (thoughts and words) depending on the transformation function (context into which we are projecting ourselves).

Such a great way to articulate this. This is why I love HN.

Thanks for explaining! I entirely agree. We all have many versions of ourselves, and they are all still us! I'm of the mind, however, that who we are when we are alone serves as a starting block around which our many other facets form.

I'm guessing you're familiar with the concept of mindfulness. Just out of curiosity, why didn't you mention/discuss it in this essay?

FWIW, I enjoyed the essay.

Great question (and thanks for commenting!)

I think I hit on the point in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23596448

I aimed to make this essay as easy to digest as possible, and part of that effort involved eliminating labels, ideas or phrases that might have a lot of inconsistent associations across different readers' minds (e.g. "mindfulness")