I'm listening to a program on NPR about the nature of identity, a particular interest of mine, as I have struggled with aspects of my own identity for years. As a Dutch girl raised partially in Holland and mostly in America, I never felt I belonged to one tribe or the other, having adopted traits from both cultures and therefore not feeling entirely at home in either. My sense of humor has battled with my shyness and my physical insecurity with my vanity. As a blond female, my identity to others sometimes battled with my own sense of self, and I have been belittled and my opinion dismissed as a dingbat blonde, while I actually have a fairly developed intellect.

I am endlessly fascinated with the way our identities are influenced by the external world's perception of them, and how certain traits may manifest themselves if repeated enough to someone as fact. Deepak Chopra has written about some very interesting experiments in which it was proven that beliefs which are held without any element of doubt, often manifest in study subjects. For example, a group of subjects who were told that they were participating in a study of the effects of alcohol were given a number of glasses of orange juice and told that they were screwdrivers (vodka & OJ). Well, after a couple of hours, these people, never even considering the possibility that they weren't actually drinking alcohol, were absolutely hammered. And certain psychiatric patients with multiple personality disorders have displayed the most amazing evidence about the power of manifestation in self-identity. These patients, while in one personality, have allergies to things like strawberries, and will break out in large hives when they eat them. But in another personality, they will not have that allergy, and can eat strawberries with no visible effects.

There have been some hypotheses in the psychological and medical communities that some health problems can be traced to personality traits and self identity. So that, say, people who "swallow everything" develop stomach and intestinal problems, and people who "blow their tops" have brain hemorrhages, so closely do they identify with the metaphor. I remember a conversation I had about this with a friend, and said that a person who suffered from a perpetual broken heart might indeed eventually have a heart attack. "Oh, Mieke," he said, chuckling at my naive sounding comment, "You don't love with your heart." I said, "I know that. I know you love with your brain. But you do feel it in your heart. I mean, when I have a broken heart, I feel it in my heart." And I realized I was the very type of person I had been talking about. I have so identified with the language and symbolism in the collective unconscious that we are given from the time we are children, that I actually now experience heartache in a literal sense, to some extent.

In the NPR program, the whole issue of cyber-reality is discussed, and the idea of alternate identities in chat rooms and gaming communities where actual economies and societal infrastructures exist that sometimes cross into reality, where rich gaming kids can buy (with real money) developed characters with virtual riches. Which begs the question: Where does the fantasy stop and reality begin? Unknown people without much in the way of a calling have created online Myspace personalities and marketed those identities to become online celebrities with thousands of "friends". I would argue that their whole identities as celebrities are just virtual identities. And their "friends" are virtual friends. Who are the "real" versions of these celebrities? They could be people sitting in bathrobes behind computer screens picking their noses.

Are our conversations online and via e-mail imposing new identities on us, by virtue of their non-animated nature? Devoid of inflection and body movements, are our words, meant to convey individual meaning and identity, being interpreted in a differently nuanced way and changing our identities in the eyes of the recipient? "You are so funny" could mean, depending on the way it is delivered in person, "You make me laugh", or "You are a strange bird", or "You are an idiot." But when sent in black and white, it means what the recipient reads into it. And here enters the whole subject of Internet dating and the personals. I don't believe that seeking a mate online is natural, because it puts the cart before the proverbial horse. People who date online, according to my untested theory, will make intellectual connections and project desired personalities onto virtual suitors. They will fill in the blanks according to what they imagine someone's text really means. Then, armed with their fantasy version of that person's identity, they march off to meet the "real" thing. But their opinions have already been formulated, and their judgement is clouded, no matter how neutral they might wish to be. And this is backwards.

Nature, in my opinion, presented us with inexplicable rules of attraction based on chemistry and that certain "je ne sais quoi", which are at the core of a strong connection with a potential mate. When "je sais tout", I can no longer be unbiased when I meet someone face to face. So the fella you meet who has a great body, a bestselling novel, and owns a villa in Italy, might actually have left you cold if you met him before you knew all of that and you shared your love of Camus with each other, and the funny looking mathematician might have blown your mind, if you hadn't already hit "delete". Not that the stuff on paper doesn't matter. It does. And there are shades of gray. But I think it's best to meet someone as soon as possible to see if the "je ne sais quoi" is there when you're seeking a mate. Learn from the mistakes of others: A friend of mine used to do quite a bit of online dating. Eventually, he "fell in love" with a girl who lived in another state. They spoke on the phone and chatted online daily, and eventually, decided to meet in a romantic cabin getaway for three days. Turns out, they had no attraction to each other, didn't really like each other's fully fleshed out personalities, and spent two excruciatingly awkward days trapped in a cabin before cutting the whole thing short. And who needs to identify with that kind of disaster?

I suppose the real trick to getting a handle on your identity is to integrate the different forms it takes— the public, interpersonal, intimate, and internal versions of your identity. As a writer, I find I have an easier time expressing myself on paper, when I can stop to ponder here and there and seek the right word to convey the right tone, something which is not always possible at the speed of life. But is this then a better representation of my identity than when I stammer over words or feel intimidated in "real" life or just get stupid silly with friends after a few glasses of wine? And is that a more "real" version of me than the melancholy or angry uninhibited emotion of my journals or secret thoughts? I have spent years as a chameleon, and can generally find a side of myself that gets along in most crowds. Does that make me false? I don't think so.

My thoughts on this subject could go on ad infinitum, but I believe I'll stop there. I think it's time to adopt the identity of "working woman".