it is less a problem of records than a problem of reckonings.                    we habitually see ourselves not as we are but as we aspire to be or fear we might be.                                                                                                            

too readily, too unconsciously, we absorb who the world tells us we are, then live into — up to, or down to — that image, tender porous creatures that we are.                                                                                                      (that, of course, is the most toxic effect of bigotry — we come to internalize our own devaluation by society, even if we consciously believe otherwise.)                                                                                           

all the while, half-opaque as we are to ourselves, we keep trying to communicate to others what we want, what we mean, what it is like to be us.                                                                                                                        even at their most honest and self-aware, these transmissions are irresolute and incomplete.                                                                          

often, they are warped by our yearning to appear a certain way to the receiver, to achieve a certain effect with the signal — ripples on the surface of the self, catching the light depending on the position of the observer and the fleeting weather system of the observed.

there is strange consolation in this, in knowing ourselves and each other only incompletely — a mercy that saves us from the tyranny of a final verdict on who and what we are.

maria popova