Elon Musk Claims Voting will Disappear without Trump while his Mom Encourages Voter Fraud & MTG Thinks Dems Control Hurricanes
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Oscar Wilde on “being yourself.”
Elon Musk makes his first appearance at a Trump rally and casts the election in dire terms: If Musk truly believes his warning, then he should be willing to accept my reasonable challenge.
Elon Musk’s Mom Encourages Voters to Commit Voter Fraud: A corrupt mother and corrupt son. Family values.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Sparks Backlash With Comments Made Amid Hurricane Helene Devastation: Apparently, God is using Democrats to punish Republicans. Or something.
‘It’s mindblowing’: US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge: They believe meteorologists are actually steering the hurricanes.
Kareem’s Video Break: This young skier advocates for a simple life. I’m all in.
More couples are divorcing after age 50 than ever before: It’s nice that people feel empowered enough to make this choice when necessary. But it still makes me sad.
How Hurricane Helene Deepfakes Flooding Social Media Hurt Real People: Conservatives have been spreading deep-fake disaster photos unaware—or unconcerned—that this can actually hurt disaster victims.
Roy Orbison Sings “Only the Lonely”: Orbison’s fusion of country and blues defines heartbreak like no other.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
People often advise others to “be yourself.” Going on a job interview? A first date? The first day of school? “Just be yourself and everything will work out,” they say with cheerful encouragement. That’s not as easy as it seems.
For one, I’m not always certain who exactly I am at any given time. It seems to change. One day I may feel confident and decisive, the next day I’m unsure and pensive. Some days I’m light-hearted and funny, and other days I’m grim and grimmer. Being “myself” means embracing a wide variety of moods. It’s like having ten different shirts and trying to choose the one that is “me”. Well, they’re all me, that’s why I bought them—just different versions of me.
We all spend most of our days constructing a persona, which is the person we want everyone else to see. Our persona is our greatest artwork, in constant need of refining and repairing. We want people to see us as smarter, kinder, and better-looking than we think we are. In other words, how we wish we were. However, how we actually see ourselves is our ego. The difference between how we see ourselves and how we want other people to see us is what drives most of us mad. Of course, both persona and ego are inaccurate perceptions. How then do we know ourselves?
That’s why when someone advises to “be yourself,” they’re giving useless advice. We don’t really know what the “real” us is. Should we be the enhanced projection of ourselves that we think people want to see? Or should we be the flawed image of ourselves that we see? Those may not be the precise thoughts going through our minds, but those are certainly the emotions we may feel.
Oscar Wilde’s quippy quote acknowledges our struggles to know ourselves. As we get older, we have less of a need to impress others so some of those layers fall away and we become more comfortable with what remains. We even become comfortable with the contradictions within. Being “yourself” means being the person you want to be rather than the person you think others want you to be just so they’ll like and accept you. Maintaining that facade is just too exhausting. And by spending all that time and energy maintaining that persona, you start to lose parts of the real you. This brings me to another favorite quote of mine from writer-director Joss Whedon (Firefly): “Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.”