Can I Drive? Please?

No, this post isn’t about driving (In its typical sense at least). It's about multiple personalities that are innate to us. Note that I’m not talking about a disorder. Every single one of us has a number of personalities that exist within. Now these personalities may be very active, or completely dormant. But they do exist, and play a vital role in one’s holistic personality. Now one type of personality becomes more active than the other based on the environmental variables at a given point of time. I see these personalities as passengers in a car, one of which is the driver. The car here would be one’s personality as a whole. The guy (or personality) that drives the car has the most prominent effect on the direction the car goes and hence, influences one’s actions the most. The one’s sitting at the back scream out loud for attention, most are heard and the rest are not – these are the voices in your head. Essentially what I’m trying to say is that each one of us has a sadistic fellow, an emotional being, a low down dirty scoundrel, a weasel, an alpha male (or feminist), a thief, a dumbass, a sexist, a psycho, an opportunist, a wannabe rock star, a pansy et al sitting in the car at any given point of time. The one that drives the car is the one that is the most dominant at that particular point of time. Let me try and explain. Say you get stuck in a situation where you get a plethora of benefits at the expense of another fellow. Depending on the intensity of the sadist and emo in your car, you decide to take actions. Now ideally, you’d try and extract as many benefits as you can without actually hurting anyone. But that’s not always the case. Somewhere down the line, you have to make a choice.
The choice you make depends on the guy who is, at that moment, driving the car. Your overly powerful emotions will, more often than not, make you do what keeps your conscience clear. But the sadist in you will, without a shadow of a doubt, force you to think solely about your benefits and not the hurting that you possibly impart to the other guy. What you decide to do is a function of the intensity of the guys sitting in the car and the profit (or pleasure) you derive from that very action.
Now what differentiates one’s actions from another is the degree of control that one has on these guys in the car. It's a complex process which we define ourselves as and when things happen. And not to forget, it's a continual one. What happens is that one’s brain, sub-consciously, evaluates various outcomes that are possible from an action taken at that very moment. The one that seems the most appropriate to the guy driving the car is the one we choose to take. This is precisely why, very often, we look back at our actions and wonder why we did what we did. The answer is simple. It seemed right at that point of time. What you think about that afterward is a completely different story altogether. So why is it that one needs to understand the passengers of his/her car? It's because we need to control our actions, as much as we can. We need to know when to put the emotional fool in the back seat and when to hand over the wheel to him. We need to know when to knock the lights out of the sadist and take control back from him. And the list goes on. Although one can never be fully in control of the seat shifting simply because, well, none of us are, what most refer to as, god. But developing control over these guys and their respective intensities to whatever degree possible is essential to at least have a clear conscience and a hold on your own self. This can only be done through continual critical evaluation of not just one’s own actions, but also those of other around us. This is exactly why learning from your own mistakes and from that of others is uber important. So next time you do something that you’re not very sure of, or fully understand, listen to the guys in the car.
©Anish Arora