Who the Room Wants You to Be

I am on the introverted side, and I value the fact that I am my own person and not in need of being who someone else wants me to be. Nonetheless, it seems that we all feel societal pressure to be who or what the room wants us to be.

By “the room,” I mean whatever environment of people we happen to be around.

I once had a dream that left a great impact on me. In the dream, I was at a restaurant having a conversation with many physicists. My knowledge of physics is quite basic (in the dream and reality), but in the dream, I felt compelled to take on this role I was given. I didn’t understand that it was just a role, as I thought that I was a physicist and that it looked bad that I was somehow struggling to keep up with what my colleagues were telling me. Rather than admit that I was lost, I pressed forward and pretended as if I followed their words, and then I contributed my own thoughts in a vague way to try to carry on the illusion that I knew advanced concepts in physics.

The other physicists looked at me like I was crazy. Still, somehow I felt better in trying to carry on the illusion that I was a physicist, rather than admit that I was in a false role, which may have been admitting that my whole life was false (within the context of the dream).

This scenario with physicists faded into a blur, and I found myself somewhere else.

I was in prison. I quickly took on the attitude and role of prisoner then. I started to talk like them, feel like them, act like them. I knew in my heart that I was not the prisoner type, but something about waking up in this role demanded that I fill it. It was clear that acting as if I did not belong in prison would have done nothing to help me get out of there. I took on the role as if I were truly a prisoner. This meant that if a weaker-looking prisoner caused trouble with me, I felt the need to put him in his place. On the other hand, I respected the bigger or more senior prisoners. Basically, I became just another prisoner in the short course of this dream.

Then this scenario faded away, and I found myself in another one.

I was having a romantic dinner with someone. From being in this scenario for just a moment, I figured out that this was my fiancé (only in the dream world), but I didn’t actually recognize the person. I assumed something was wrong with me for not remembering my own fiancé, and I felt the need to fill this role properly. I needed to be the good loving fiancé, and I needed to successfully have this romantic dinner with this person, even if I could not recall why or how I had gotten there. This seemed to be a fancy, special dinner. I couldn’t face the idea of ruining this night for this other person who I didn’t even know but who appeared to know me so well.

These were all deeply uncomfortable dreams for me, but I found comfort in pretending to be the role that I appeared to be, rather than acknowledging that my role was false and my life was false.

Why did this series of dreams leave such an impact on me?

It made me realize how powerful the room is that guides us into being who we are. My mind is always monitoring what it feels I am expected to be, and sometimes this can impede me from actually being who I am.

In any given situation, I may think: I’m supposed to laugh here, I’m supposed to compliment here, I’m supposed to thank this person here, I’m supposed to feel uncomfortable here, I’m supposed to get scared now, I’m supposed to be disgusted, I’m supposed to want to be friends with this person, I’m supposed to apologize, I’m supposed to feel grateful, or I’m supposed to want to be here, and so on.

I’m not a robot, so I have feelings, emotions, and more human ways of thinking. But I also always seem to have this overactive thinking mode that focuses on what I am supposed to be, do, or feel, rather than what I actually am or what I actually feel. The thinking mode seems to interfere with the being mode.

My mind is always reading the room, judging what the room wants from me. And I get the sense that if I am not giving it what it wants, I am not properly filling my role. Or I may feel that I am somehow failing to be what I was supposed to be. If I am not what others expect of me, then who am I? Is it good enough to be what I expect me to be?

And then we have to ask, is my role in my life one that I am just playing out? Could I just as easily have been in any other life situation or scenario? With one wrong turn in my life, could I have been put in prison? And if I were put in prison, wouldn’t I just become another prisoner? Another face in the crowd, doing what he is expected to do based on the circumstance.

For anyone I see in the streets, or at work, or even at home, are these just people filling a role at a certain point in time, or is this actually who they are? Is the Mom just filling the Mom role, or is she being the Mom? What about the police officer? What about the teacher? The clerk at the grocery store?

Are the roles actually minor aspects of who we truly are, but they somehow end up taking over our lives? When we see the role someone is playing, it isn’t easy to see them as anything else. In some ways, the humanity may be stripped away, and we see the role, not the person.

As humans, we can know what people in the room want from us and then attempt to appease them. And it’s difficult to resist the urge to appease those around us because it feels rewarding when they like us, or want to be around us, or congratulate us for being what they wanted us to be.

We can say that “I am not being controlled by any room – I am my own person,” but that is not quite my point. Of course, anyone can choose to go against what the room wants. My point is that we all have this benchmark understanding of what the room wants from us. And so it feels like anything we do is a reaction to that. Imagine that someone suddenly throws a ball at your face. Whether you try to get out of the way or catch it, or even if you get hit by it, you cannot deny that the ball is coming toward you and that you must do something. What the room wants from us is just as powerful as the ball coming at your face – it demands that you respond somehow.

Sometimes I come across people who, when they interact with me, are reacting to what they expect me to want them to do or reacting to what they expect me to be thinking. Much of the time, they are wrong. I clear my throat sometimes, and people sometimes think I am trying to rush them. Actually, I’m just clearing my throat – it’s something I do more than most people, and I’m not sure why, but I don’t do it to try to rush anyone. Once they have identified me clearing my throat as something people do to rush other people, it’s difficult for them to get away from that thought. They feel forced into reacting to that thought. Sometimes they apologize for inconveniencing me, even though that was not even on my mind.

Other times, I have asked for help with something, and the person has gotten very angry with me. Apparently, they were overwhelmed with their own life, and they got angry that I would dare to “impose” extra work on them and “expect” them to do it for free. However, I wasn’t expecting anything – I had simply been asking a question to see if they were in the position to help. They were reacting to what they thought I would be thinking or expecting.

So interestingly, many of us are reacting to this room, and the room is a mirage. What we think the room wants often isn’t even what it wants. But we react to it somehow. We can go along with what it wants or against it, but we are reacting to it either way. Once we have a benchmark in mind for what the room wants, it’s difficult to escape this “reality bubble” we have created. It’s a reality bubble because it is a true perception of reality in some respects and false in others. When you realize its falseness, it pops, and another reality bubble replaces it. This can happen over and over. We tend to think that our current reality bubble represents the true reality, but of course, it never actually does.

The Forces that Pull Us Apart and Make Us Who We Are

In the modern-day, we are pulled apart in many different directions. Religion tells us that a God is looking out for us, with a larger purpose in mind for humanity. Science cannot give us a reason for being here. It can just examine our parts and the nature of matter. Philosophy has shown us many perspectives on thinking and being but has not led us toward a particular direction for the future. History has told us how we got here, but not what we need to change to get where we need or want to be.

The other guiding forces are from our parents, peers, and society. Some people listen more to their parents, and some more to their peers, who could be friends, colleagues, or just the people one happens to be surrounded by for most of the day. Most of us listen somewhat to society, and those who stray too far often end up imprisoned or forgotten.

Often, neither our parents nor our peers quite have things figured out. They are just filling out their roles, as prescribed to them by their parents, peers, or society, informed by their religion, science, philosophies, and histories.

People do not know themselves well. We are told who we are or need to be by our parents, our education system, our society, but we are not led to investigate who we are properly. We are told who we are (or guided into being who others think we should be), and then we become who we were told we were. This may be a false self, created to appease the people around us or society.

As individuals, we are whole universes unto ourselves, as the universe at large does not exist on its own. The universe at large exists as an interplay between the mind and the universe, making the universe what we experience it to be. Another mind of a different sort would fabricate an entirely different universe – for instance, different colors, emotions, intuitions, beliefs, and visual perceptions would completely alter one’s personal universe. I am in my own self-created universe, and you are in your own universe – but of course, they do overlap.

We must ask ourselves how we can move forward as societies when we are pulled apart by different personal universes, beliefs, and messages that do not coalesce on any particular point? Religion pulls us in one direction, science in the other, our peers in another, and our true selves likely in yet another direction. Many of us are being pulled apart from our core. And not only from ourselves but by the people around us too.

It is no wonder that mental illness is so common. Perhaps individuals are not mentally ill, but society, which is pulling us in all directions, has made us this way.

Then we have an ongoing debate in the world about whether we should be led by reason or intuition, our analytical side, or our emotional side. This provides us with another split in the psyche.

Are you man enough or woman enough (or masculine or feminine enough)? People who do not naturally fit their expected roles may be made to feel that something is wrong with them, which of course, harms the psyche.

Then we have ideas of sexuality, in that you are either gay or straight – sure, we acknowledge more types now, but many people still see this as mostly two types of sexuality. So you are one thing or another, which splits the psyche of many people as well. If you are part of both or have different sides, you may not be accepted or understood.

We have race – are you white or not? Are you white enough? Black enough? You are artificially split based on skin tone, or possibly ancestry, even if that skin tone or ancestry may not represent who you are on the inside. Society tells us that to be white, you have to be pure (white from both your parents). Otherwise, you are treated as no longer truly white. A white and black person, for example, is treated as black, as was former President Barack Obama (who has a white mother). Often enough, other races or groups (e.g., Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Native American) are neglected from the general conversation, which could make them feel as if they are not relevant enough.

If you occupy two conflicting groups (as viewed by society) at once, society often decides what you are for you.

We are pressed to be in one of these poles, as the middle ground is often ignored. Are you rational or intuitive? Gay or straight? Black or white? Liberal or conservative? Religious or atheist? These are some examples of the categories of our lives. For every category you are in, there increases the chance that you will hate or be hated by individuals in the other group. We are all in multiple categories, so we all belong in groups that hate or are hated, and we tend to inherit that hate that our groups carry with them. We inherit this hate and are expected to carry it along, or we are treated as if we are not proper members of our group, and our own group will hate us. If that happens, we will be treated as “other” and destined to be forever lost and abandoned.

We grow up with this hatred all around us, and in the hearts of the people closest to us, so it seems normal. In fact, we often end up carrying the hatred (or anger, fear, disgust, etc.) of our ancestors. We inherit this hate and then pass it on to our families, and they pass it on to the next generation. At some point, we must realize that every individual is a member of various groups, and those groups may have longstanding problems with other groups. But there is no reason for us as individuals to absorb so much hatred and then pass it on.

How do we rise above the hatred? We pursue meaningful connections with more people. We pursue open-mindedness, empathy, deep listening, understanding, and we begin to acknowledge the role that our groups or we have played in causing problems. We consider deeply that some of the thoughts or beliefs of people in groups outside our own may be legitimate. At some point, our biases may have led us to believe that they were 100% wrong on everything, even when this is not reflected in reality. Likewise, they may have come to think that we were 100% wrong on everything, even when that was not the case.

One way to rise above all this is to see that we are not our categories. The categories are aspects of us, but they are not us. A book can be hardcover or softcover. It can have a red, blue, or yellow cover. It can have a catchy title or a boring one. There are all kinds of books, but ultimately, what should matter is whether the content inside is true and useful, entertaining, or whatever the objective may be with reading it. Just as with humans, we tend to forget that our personal content, or who we are at our core, is what actually matters, not all the superficial qualities that we happen to exhibit.

We must stop being blinded by the categories that people wear for us to see, often not even by choice. Instead, open your mind and look deeper into their true core of being.