This entire section’s objective is to help develop your “act” and understand that you are not your “act”. The author clearly states, “We are all, to some extent, actors.” Some people value acting as a hobby or career but little do people know, everyone puts on some kind of “act” throughout their lifestyle. Whether it is a happy façade or assuming the role of housewife, these acts are natural habits that we create because of what we imagine we need from the world.
Almost every person creates their own imaginary audience which determines their actions and this audience is composed of possibly ones father, mother, boss, friends, colleagues and even enemies. Most of all, front row center, your gremlin is a part of this audience and dictates a lot of the acts of which you do. All of these people who are your audience have an influence over your actions and feelings. This audience can make you happy but they are applauding for the act you are portraying and not for you and who you are. However, this applause will still make you feel good about yourself and at the same time, your toughest critic, your gremlin, will be doing his best to tear you apart and discourage you. These acts prevent yourself from displaying your true self and from letting the real you be heard, seen, or touched.
To understand yourself, it is stated that you must be honest with yourself. How do you want to be seen by others and who are the people you want to impress? Another approach to understanding what “acts” you choose to portray is by analyzing yourself at the beginning stages of a relationship. What do you let your partner know about yourself? What do you tell them? What do people say when you are not around? All humans have developed a different variation of “acts” for logical reasons; to receive what we think we want and to receive what we think we need. This “acting” can be fun and rather harmless as long as you don’t let your gremlin get the best of you and as long as you recognize it as an “act” and not the real you. There will come an instance when you will not perform your “act” up to par and this feeling will leave you disappointed in yourself and empty; this occurs because you give your gremlin full rein.
Sometimes in interpersonal relationships, such as couples, two individuals can perform “acts” together. There is a common general agreement which the author states as, “I promise to help you convince yourself that you are the way you want to think you are, if you promise to do the same for me.” Usually, when couples act together, one partner gets fed up with acting or one partner sees through the other’s “act”. This leads to critical tones, a lot of thoughts originating from your inner gremlin, and putting down yourself or your partner. The upside to this madness is that once the couple recognizes their “acts” they can then begin to establish an intimate relationship and enjoy each other. This intimacy cannot occur without the ability to share your true self with another and the ability to experience and accept their true being. An “act” cannot be in play because it will interfere with your pure self. Removing these “acts”, and barriers like them, will leave you vulnerable and exposed but will eventually lead you to enjoyment and susceptible to love.
“What Is So” is a section dedicated to explaining how you must experience to know what is so. If you are thirsty, one cannot describe the sensation you will experience finally drinking that ice cold water… you just have to do it to understand it. “There is no substitute for experience.” The author then relates this concept back to helping one understand the importance of using each exercise in this book and applying it to their lives and situations.
The author does a wonderful job of reiterating each important concept and sticking to his process. The tone is still teasingly simple but not degrading. The author repeats himself and has a couple punch-lines which reveal an edge in his personality. I continue to enjoy his writing style even though I feel he sometimes exhausts his concepts because he repeats himself so frequently. However, I understand he is attempting to describe complex ideas to the average individual, (or less than average), and repeating is a good strategy to consecrate each idea.
This section continued to be delightfully relatable. I do care a lot of how people view me and what they say about me when I am not present. In fact, a family friend would tease me about how co-dependent I was; caring too much about others. I feel as if I do create this imaginary audience but not only does it exist, it also is a large audience and some people really shouldn’t be included. I also easily put on a different “act” each day for any given situation. I can be the polite proper girl with any superior adult figure, I can be a daddy’s girl, and I can even be that slightly rebel teenager that my parents don’t know of. I know half of my friends and acquaintances in high school, including teachers, did not know the real me just because I knew how I wanted to be perceived by the general population and I knew how to do it. Granted, this was a very positive image not too far from the truth, but it wasn’t me. Perhaps it was the ideal me who I wish I was, but wasn’t.
I also was quite fascinated with the concept the author presented about couples and the act they perform together. However, I would like to believe that I never made this agreement to myself or my partner. Love is seeing an imperfectly person perfectly, and I do believe the author presented a watered down depressing version of that. When in a relationship you are giving your partner all the power to destroy you and all the while trusting them not too; to me this includes accepting my flaws and loving them as I return that favor.
I do know at one point in time, during a transition between my first serious boyfriend and the one following, I recognized all these barriers I had placed between my partner and my true self. I was still grieving from having my true self denied the first time that I was subconsciously protecting myself in ways that I didn’t know were possible. And to this today, my biggest flaw is communicating my upset emotions. I think they are childish and that my partner will deny my emotions as unreasonable and therefore deny my true self.
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