In terms of identity, I'm the same person no matter what I'm doing.
I see myself as the same person as I was, as I am now.
Some of us, for better or worse, develop very stable, consistent, and largely predictable machineries of self. But in others, the self machinery is more flexible and more open to unexpected turns.
How can you have this reference point, this stability, that is required to maintain the continuity of selves day after day?
Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.
The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize.
I'm never overwhelmed or under it either; just nicely whelmed. I'm OK. Nothing spectacular but sometimes special. I look in the mirror and see this medium average person. A little tired, a little sad, but not falling apart.
