The Committee Inside My Head.

There’s a committee inside my head. Maybe in yours too? The members don’t all talk at the same time, but they do struggle. I only have one body, (I'd kind of like a new one. Who said that!? Be quiet!) and whoever has the controls to that at the moment is the one who claims to be me.

I’ve always thought the split-personality idea was intriguing - anecdotes about flute players who play brilliantly one day, and cannot play at all another. Tales of left and right arms fighting each other in people who have had the two halves of their brains separated. I suspect that multiple personalities are present in all of us in a less morbid way. How else to explain changes of mood, or the awkwardness of unexpectedly meeting someone totally out of context? The inner lurch as two drivers grab for the controls.

We think we are one person because our selves have access to the same body and the same memories. It only becomes morbid when they get cut off from one another, and cease to know about each other.

As Wallace Stegner put it: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” The self that writes is different from the self that thinks, and the problem in leading an effective life is handing your body over to the right self at the right time. My theory of procrastination is this. The self in control refuses to let a more appropriate self get the job done. It is a mini-fear of death. How can I (one of my inner-selves,) be sure I will ever come back? Please do not banish me.

I have no idea how many folks there are in our committees, but there are a lot. And the single-body fact misleads us into not noticing when a switch does or does not take place. Spouses, Parents, and Bosses are pretty good at noticing – hence nagging. The nagger knows from experience that the nagee Can Do the Thing Urged. Nagging is a form of saying “Time to Switch Self, dear Body!” Maybe the best self-switching device yet invented is money. Sex and drugs come close.
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Here are some of the selves which live inside me:

The Somatic Self, that feels great during and after exercise, and just enjoys physical existence, and feeling the mood lift.

The Blob Self that refuses to exercise because it is boring, and stupid, and lacking in intellectual heft, and probably won’t work, and isn’t necessary.

The Needy, Anxious Self that wants fun, and is terrified of boredom, and so, rather than give up the controls, gets a glass of wine and turns on the TV, bribing the body to let it stay, and promising that all will be fine after just a little pleasure.

There is also the Performer Self, who loves being in total command of a score, out there in public in front of an orchestra, living in that secondary world of carefully acquired knowledge, real emotional freedom, and communal reality.

But there is the Antsy Self that cannot bear the tedium of the repetition needed to learn anything by rote or by practice. This is the self that makes playing the piano impossible (practice!? You must be crazy!) and learning scores hard. (We already went over this 73 times!)

There is, sometimes, the Creative Self that writes music and words and comes up with loads of ideas, and can even put them together and integrate them. (This is the one I like best. Who said that? I did, the real self. Nonsense! There isn't one. Oh. I don't exist? Damn.)

Unfortunately, Creative is one of a pair of conjoined twins, locked at the hip to the Critical Self who thinks all the ideas are useless, and has the knack of pointing out Exactly What Is Wrong. They are always together, and the best to hope for is a referee that gets them to speak in turn, not simultaneously.

There is also a Happy Self, that is content in the moment, thinks all the others did pretty well, and sees how navel-watching is not helpful.

Beware of the depressed self, that winces at the mere presence of all the others.

The problem I have not yet solved – not at all – is how to manage a peaceful change of government. How to be creative when I have time, - how to hand over to the Anal Self when it is time to pay the bills, how to relax when that is warranted. I know “I” can do all these things, because I can remember observing my body do them in the past – I have documents to prove it. But how to get the right self in charge at the right time - . How to get the wrong self to GO AWAY and let someone else use the body for a time, that’s a constant struggle. They all suffer from separation anxiety.

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