I was making breakfast the other morning when my sister in law came through the kitchen on her way to work. (I keep slightly different hours than most everyone else in the house.) We got talking about the ubiquitous quizzes that are on Facebook-which superhero are you, where should you live, what color are your eyes, those sorts of things. I’m not going to lie I’m slightly addicted to them. insomuch as i don’t search them out but I have found myself taking some that I came across even though they’re not really for me. Besides, I don’t need a quiz to tell me which Disney Princess I am.
She was telling me that she had taken one about which character from “Gone with the Wind” she was, and she had happily been told that she was Scarlett O’Hara. Then, for poops and giggles she took it again, but this time answering the questions as she thought my brother, a.k.a. her husband, would answer them. Partially she did this out of spite to get back at him for a joke he had made earlier, which was funny at the time but far too long winded to go into now (trust me, though, my brother’s funny) and partially to see if there was any rationality to how they came to a conclusion. Apparently there isn’t, because my brother is also Scarlett O’Hara. She seems to think (my sister in law, not Scarlett) that it all hinges on one of the early questions and the rest is just smoke screen, so that no matter how different two people may be, if they both answer one particular question the same way, they’re going to get the same result. My theory is a little more conspiratorial, in that while you are taking the quiz, behind the scenes it is madly searching through all of your files and browser history to see what you really like. I came to this theory when my results from two quizzes in a row were Snoopy and The Cat in the Hat.
Being much more familiar with the work of Mr. Schulz than I am with Mr. Seuss, there were several Peanuts characters i wouldn’t have minded being, but Snoopy was and is my first love. I had seen a couple of other people take the Dr. Seuss quiz to know that Horton and the fish were two options, neither one of which would have resulted in me posting the results. (Yes, I do that. I take these quizzes and if I don’t like the answer I don’t share. What of it? I cheat at solitaire as well, so there.) When I got the Cat in the Hat, I was happy. I could relate to him: mischievous, funny, smart, my type of cat. Of course i shouldn’t read too much into this, right?
Well, why not? So many things happen in our day to day world that bring us down, undermine our confidence, or just erase a little bit of our smile that when something comes along to make us feel good about ourselves, why not celebrate it for a moment? I know that these are not even remotely unique; I was probably one of about a million people that day who figured out they were Snoopy and/or the Cat in the Hat. But at the same time, as i struggle with my own identity, basically in a process of re-branding myself, it is nice to get a little confirmation about the parts of me I know are there but I don’t seem to find enough.
i was thinking about it more the next day when I took one of there “Where should you live?” quizzes, because I found myself struggling with a couple of questions. That may sound silly, I mean it’s a meaningless quiz on Facebook, with no right or wrong answers, but I found myself over thinking it as usual. (I’m not kidding when I say I over think everything. I do. I even over think writing these blogs, which is why there hasn’t been one in a few weeks.) One of the questions that I remember asked what my idea of a good night would be, and two of the options were “a rooftop party with lots of people” and “a night curled up with a good book.”
Today my answer wouldn’t be the same as it would have been a year ago, and i found myself hesitating. Do I answer the way I would have, the way I think people would want me to answer, or do I answer from where I am now? I couldn’t even put it in the realistic, because the answer would depend on which friends, what book and where the roof top was. Certain people and certain places would trump whatever book was in my hand, but you’d better bring your a game if you want me to put “Watership Down” down.
In the end I chose to answer from where I am today, in the here and now, because ultimately that is who we are. We are certainly shaped from our past, both our successes and our failures, and we make decisions in our lives with somewhat of an eye on the future, but our present it what we bring to the table. A year from now, fie years from now, whenever, maybe I’ll still be reading a book, maybe I’ll be on a roof top somewhere, or maybe I’ll be somewhere altogether different. But as silly as these quizzes may be, they do force us to do something meaningful:
They make us ask ourselves who we are.
Soundtrack. Not until I got to the last line did I know what song to play. As soon as i wrote it, I knew that this was the only choice.
PopcornJackTerry 