The Same Me

 

The Same Me

On status, reputation, and the people who change when the label does

They judged me on status. They said: you’re unemployed, therefore you have no status, and we do not want our reputation tarnished by association with you. They got rid of me out of their life. It cost me a relationship with their daughter. I still have love for her. She is, however, like them.

That was not a judgment of character. It was a judgment of position.

I

Somebody with more authority than them judged me on personality, ability, and morality. That person offered me an opportunity to step into a position of responsibility — the kind society regards as a position of esteem. I accepted the role.

It is a voluntary role. I am not being paid. Dedication is a factor in the right person getting the job. I am still unemployed. Perhaps that I am unemployed makes me fit for it: I have the time available to make the most of it.

Now people are looking at me through the lens of the new role. The ground has shifted. I have not.

I am the same me. I am the continuity of awareness, emotional-cognitive functionalism, alignment, experience, memory. The same as any other individual. That has not changed. What has changed is their attitude towards me. They have stopped regarding me as a bum, and therefore a liability which would tarnish their reputation. They are now looking at me as a success, as an asset, which is good for their reputation.

II

This shift in their perception, and the change in attitude that followed it, shows me what they are. They are adaptive to the social tide, without having any humanity. They are performative. They are transactional.

In society there is a place for performative and transactional conduct. Business requires it. Peace negotiations require it. In humanity, in family, there is a place for empathy and for forgiveness. Alongside both, there is a need for the clarity of critical thinking — which we can call discernment.

Reputation includes those two measures. My reputation has changed in their minds because the label changed. My reputation has also changed in the minds of people who had already accepted me for being myself. Some of those congratulate me on the new position. Some reject me because of it, for whatever reasons they contain.

People expose themselves by their behaviour. By the choices they make. By the way they treat other people. By the way they treat other people when there is no reward and no punishment attached to the treatment. By the way they treat other people in public because they want to be seen to be something — the mask, which is not the soul behind it.

From these words you can assess, with your own discernment, what sort of person I am, even without having shared a space with me in a relaxed social context. I am the same person I was when I was treated as a stain on someone else’s name. The difference is not in me. The difference is in who needed the tide to turn before they could look at me straight.

What remains, for my part, is the morality of acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and an open hand of trust for those who are capable of trust. It is not a naive trust. The rest have already said what they are.