are you who you are without your surroundings?

i sometimes think about how we can tell who we are.

in the sense of, what things are there and how do i know i am myself,
and not somebody else who is taking someone else’s place in my body?
if you couldn’t tell, imposter syndrome runs pretty deep around here.

but i hear that using your external surroundings is a good way
to reinforce who you are and what you do, at least in terms of
physically grounding yourself in reality.

for example, if you woke up with a blank slate and saw
that you had multiple pairs of running shoes, accessories,
a fitness tracker, and a home gym, you would probably think
“the person i am is likely someone who cares about fitness.”

perhaps a more idealistic thing is that our true selves
would arise regardless of the circumstances. and for brevity,
we will not be discussing nature vs. nurture and whether we’re
just destined to become shells of our parents and how we were raised.

i think it would be nice if someone who’s nice and does nice things
would, in any reality, be a nice person who does nice things.

thanks for reading today’s post.
in all timelines, i am a gamer.