Who's the Real Me?

A question that should be asked by people. One that perhaps, cannot be answered. Who am I? Am I who I really am, or who people perceive me to be? Indeed, when George Herbert Mead established the theory of the mind and the self, and interesting perspective to life had been formed.

The self is actually the socialized aspect of a person. I am a male, a student, something that society expects of me, and as such I act in that way. The mind is the space within which my personality can stray from the expected path. I am who I am and what I want myself to be. And yet we cannot just be anyone and anything. We are constrained. Constrained by the expectations of society, social facts that have been present before our very births.

But indeed, who am I? In today's age, persona are increasingly adopted by people. A shy, quiet outward persona. A dark, inward persona that lives within the confines of one's mind. A third, online persona, perhaps extroverted, enthusiastic and deeply involved in many things. But which is the real me?

Can we, through thinking and meditating, ever establish our true self? Or will it instead lead to a rapid divergence from the truth. And are we afraid of our true selves should we find it, after removing layer after layers of masks that we wear each day that we no longer realize that we are wearing them?

To this, there is no conclusion. But I question the criticality of this question. Even if we did know, what would change?