The self-portrait of the conceptual artist Robert Morris is a copy of his electroencephalogram. A young man responded “human” when asked for his biological race. Paul Simon’s “soft-in-the-middle” guy says we should call him “Al.”  We are pretty creative when it comes to telling people who we are.  That’s because, contrary to popular belief, we really do know ourselves better than anyone else, and we want everyone to see us as we see ourselves.

Robert Morris knew, for example, that painting his face with its predictable eyes, nose and mouth would bore a viewer into stupefaction. But Robert didn’t see himself as boring. His unexpected interpretation of the self-portrait was meant to surprise the viewer into a state of wonder at who the “self” really is. The young man who identifies as human wants us to recognize the socially constructed idea of race as a mask that hides a unique and valuable person. Paul Simon’s Al is not an anonymous, shapeless blob, but rather he is a whole universe of feelings, thoughts and preferences.

So how could we know who Robert or our young man or Paul Simon’s Al are if they didn’t tell us? This is a big problem that we like to solve by not listening to what people tell us about themselves, and by telling them instead who we think they are. Wow! Are we in for a surprise when we finally learn to see the real people behind the identity we blithely assign them.       In Stoner, the ‘60s novel by John Williams, the central character is known to all as a passive and mediocre professor of English.  Surprise! Surprise! We learn in the novel that throughout his adult life, Professor Stoner is one in a trillion, a person who stands out from the anonymous mass of ‘60s overachievers in his cohort — not only because he is not passive or mediocre, but because he knows he is none of that. The object of student mockery, Stoner enters his classroom one day to find a heckling student sitting at his desk, regarding him with delighted scorn. Stoner rises to the dare in a totally unexpected manner. He chooses to ignore the offensive behavior. Instead, he arranges his notes on the lectern and goes about teaching literature.  Because he knows that’s who he is and what he does. Stoner, it so happens, is a person of many parts, a teacher gifted with keen insight and the infinite patience needed to transmit what he knows of the world to others.

We often see ourselves as we want to be, not as who we are. But that, too, is part of this project of refusing to let others tell you who you are. Labels belong on jars of food, not on human beings. Now go out there and tell us who you really are. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. It had better be you.

—Susan Rosenstreich