I write therefore I think.

You can never read too much Batman

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem

Looking back through my diaries I discovered plenty of interesting stuff. There's lots I could share with my solicitor or my psychiatrist. Along with lots I should probably avoid sharing with my wife. There's lots I'd like to blog about. There is also, and this rather worried me initially, two distinct personalities visible on a line by line basis. For almost two weeks now I've been searching for a context upon which I could expand these ramblings publicly.

I suppose you could say I've been searching for my voice. Then, as if by magic, an old friend appeared and hit the nail on the head. Well actually, now I re-read the offending paragraph, I see he managed the astounding feat of hitting three nails with one swing of the hammer. Seemingly opening a can of worms too. Setting aside my desire to digress and extemporise on my fledgling theories I'm going to stick to the rusty nail which mirrored the initial chord.

Because although my diary has some use in recording life events, it's main purpose I now see was to help me find somebody: The Real Me. It sounds trite I know, but really that's why I started my diary. It's also why I started blogging. Nobody could argue that as we live life we are shaped and we change. But in fact that's backwards, because it's the changes which are life. In another example of applied synchronicity I made these notes after casting an I Ching in the bath the other night:

To stand still is regression. A firmly integrated whole renews itself and is not worn down by hindrances. Contraction the end turns into the new beginning of expansion. Change and transformation - the inner law of being - produces effects that endure.

But as my friend deftly pointed out, we sell our souls to the economy. We permit the external influences of working life to grow for us work-specific personas that bear no resemblance to the people we really are. Personally I've always been aware of the masks I wear, and that's probably why I've lived with agoraphobia for more years than I care to imagine. It's why I had a major psychotic break when life got too hard. And it's why now have a wonderful personality disorder with which to entertain my team of brain care specialists.

Yet it is through the auspices of my six-year-old son, exhibiting either childish innocence or wisdom far beyond even my years (even now I'm not quite sure which), that the my final realisation recently became clear to me. Quite simply he requested a repeat viewing of Batman Begins and insisting I watch it with him. As I sat there and watched this most marvellous Gnostic reinterpretation of a cherished myth I realised something startling. Bruce Wayne is the persona, the mask for public consumption. Whereas Batman is the real person, and by the simple use of nothing more than cheap theatrics, requires no mask. With this realisation came the answer to my quest.

The real me?

Is Batman.